CHAPTER V.. Giants of the Feathered World.

GIANTS OF THE FEATHERED WORLD.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the earliest birds were both stranger and, in some cases at least, larger than most of the species found on earth today. But as we go upward in the geologic scale, we find that the primitive birds were far outstripped by their relatively modern descendants. Some of these feathered Goliaths, such as the Ostrich of Africa, are alive today; some have but recently become extinct, and their relics are found by thousands in the districts where they once roamed. Still others, though probably not the largest of their class, died out thousands, or even millions of years before man appeared upon the earth. They, like the mighty dinosaurs that preceded them, succumbed to the many enemies which constantly attack every animal that lives and left the earth to their more successful rivals and descendants.

Among the best known of the more recent avian giants, so recently extant that it still lives in the traditions of the peoples whose ancestors feasted upon its flesh, is the great Moa of New Zealand. The first announcement of the existence of this remarkable bird was made by the Rev. W. Colenso, a missionary who later became Bishop of New Zealand. Early in the year of 1838, while on a missionary trip in the North Island, Bishop Colenso secured from the natives of Waiapu legends regarding a mammoth bird, called the Moa, which possessed a human head, and which inhabited a mountain some eighty miles inland. This creature, according to the legends, was the last of his kind, and was carefully guarded by two gigantic lizards who stood watch while the bird slept. When an enemy, especially a man, approached, these lizards roused the Moa, who immediately rushed upon the intruders and trampled them to death. It appeared that none of the savages had ever seen this bird--due, perhaps, to its watchful guardians and fierce prowess--but they were very sure of its existence. In fact, they used bones of his dead relatives in making their fishing implements, and these bones, they assured the bishop, were quite as large as those of the European ox.

But a short time later, another missionary, the Rev. Richard Taylor, discovered a bone which was said to belong to the Moa, and received considerable free information about its possessor from the natives with whom he was associated. But, as Dr. Lucas remarks in telling of the incident, just “as the foot of the rainbow moves away as we move toward it, in his case the bird was said to dwell in a quite different locality from that given by the natives of East Cape” where Rev. Colenso had secured his information. Taylor’s informants, like the other natives, had not seen the Moa, nor did they even know anyone who had, but they had no doubt of its existence. When after many years of search, however, there was not a single explorer who had seen, heard, or tracked the giant bird, scientists refused to believe the tales of the natives, and some went so far as to deny that the Moa had lived at any time within the era of man.

These latter, however, went somewhat too far in their questioning. For even though no man has seen the living Moa, its remains are scattered abundantly over the hills, valleys and swamps of New Zealand, and from them scientists have been able to gain a very reliable idea of the size, structure, and general appearance of the feathered giant. Probably the most remarkable find of Moa remains was made in one of the large, dry caves of South Island, where collectors secured not only a number of bones with the original flesh adhering, but also several patches of skin to which clung numerous feathers of a chestnut color tipped with white. True, these small, rusty-brown feathers were not very spectacular, but when we stop to consider that they have been kept for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years without any preservative whatever, and that they belonged to a race of creatures now totally extinct, our respect for them increases greatly. Since the original possessor of those feathers died in his New Zealand cavern many wars have been won and lost, powerful nations have arisen, new languages and systems of thought have been established, and the surface of the earth has been carved, planed, and pitted by the restless inventive animal called man. And now that same man is spending a considerable amount of his most prized possession--money--to gather and preserve the broken, dried remains of that old New Zealand bird, his relatives and ancestors.

It is now well known, that instead of but one species of Moa, as the New Zealand savages told the missionaries, there were twenty or more. Some of these were quite small--but little larger than the turkey--while others, such as Dinornis (terrible bird) must have reached a height of at least ten feet, and were, in all probability, the largest birds that have ever been seen on earth. Remarkably enough, some writers have not been satisfied with even these great dimensions, and have stated the height of some of the Moas to be from twelve to fourteen feet. These measurements, however, can be attained only by placing the skeleton in a most unnatural position, which the bird could not possibly have maintained while alive. There is a natural desire on the part of man to magnify his discoveries, and the remains of extinct creatures are favorite subjects for such romancing. Unfortunately for the writers, these same bones offer incontestable evidence as to the actual sizes of the creatures to which they belonged, and sooner or later all errors must be corrected and “the high made low.” As Dr. F. A. Lucas has insisted over and over again, the greatest monster always shrinks before the application of a two-foot rule.

The Moas, like the modern Ostriches, were quite incapable of flight. Indeed, many of them were totally wingless, lacking even the tiny, almost invisible vestigial wings that are to be found in such modern species as the Cassowary and Apteryx. But what they lacked in wings the Moas more than made up for in legs. Those of one species, dubbed elephantopus (elephant-footed) were so ponderous that one cannot but wonder what purpose they served. The theory most generally accepted is that they were of value in digging out the roots of ferns, upon which the Moas appear to have fed. Furthermore, when we remember that one blow from the foot of an angry ostrich is quite enough to kill a man, we cannot doubt that the Moa was quite able to either trample underfoot, or smash to a shapeless pulp almost any enemy that might have assailed it. The lizard watchmen of the Maori legend are, of course, inventions, but the ferocious habits of the enraged Moa are without question matters of pure fact.

So far as known, the Moas were confined to New Zealand, some species inhabiting North Island, some South, but with very few common to both. From this fact Lucas, and others who have studied the birds, conclude that the two islands were originally one, and that long after the Moas came into existence there was a submergence which divided the island into two. After that submergence sufficient time elapsed to allow for the development of several species of Moas, each restricted to one island. Inasmuch as the birds could not fly, and probably were poor swimmers, there was but little intermingling of the faunas. “Although Moas were still numerous when man made his appearance in this part of the world, the large deposits of their bones indicate that they were on the wane, and that natural causes had already reduced the feathered population of these islands. A glacial period is believed to have wrought their destruction, and in one great morass, abounding in springs, their bones occur in such enormous numbers, layer upon layer, that it is thought the birds sought the place where the flowing springs might afford their feet at least some respite from the biting cold, and there perished miserably by thousands.”

The glacial cold, however, did not completely destroy the Moas. We have already seen that legends of the birds were told to the pioneering white missionaries, and other tales of Moa hunts and Moa feasts were not uncommon. It is uncertain whether the last of these giants was eaten by the ancient Maoris, or by a race that preceded them. Some authors have suggested, apparently on fairly good ground, that Moas formed the sole important flesh food of these prehistoric peoples, and that with the dying out of the avian food supply, the hereditary liking for flesh naturally led to cannibalism. Thus the savages who destroyed the Moas turned to destroying themselves, were supplanted by another race which handed on the knowledge of the Moas to the white man who in turn set about killing off the savages.

From the New Zealand Moa to Sinbad the Sailor, and his huge and unintentionally beneficent Roc, is, at first thought, a very far cry, yet the separation is not so great as it seems. The Arabian tales give the habitation of the Roc as either Madagascar or one of the adjoining islands, and it seems very probable that the original of the huge bird that carried the adventurous Sinbad out of the crater of diamonds was the Aepyornis, a distant relative of the Moas, and an inhabitant of Madagascar. It is quite true that the Roc was a gigantic bird quite capable of carrying off an elephant to make a meal for its young, while the Aepyornis was little larger than an ostrich, was incapable of flight, and fed upon plants. These facts, however, would in no way interfere with the fancy of an Arabian story teller, whose original materials probably were a collection of Aeypornis legend substantiated by fragments of the bird’s enormous eggs. Hardly greater exaggerations are perpetrated weekly by the “feature writers” of American Sunday newspapers, and these men have all the resources of modern science at their disposal.

The actual scientific “discovery” of Aepyornis did not take place until 1834, when Jules Verreaux, a French ornithologist received a sketch of a huge egg, found in the island of Madagascar. The informant, a traveler, said that he had seen two of these eggs, one of which had been used in cracking rice, while the other had been sawed in two to be used as bowls. Later on, some fragments of a shell were secured by another traveler, and finally, in 1851, two entire eggs and a number of bones were secured and sent to France. They were studied by Geoffroy St-Hilaire, a noted naturalist and pioneer evolutionist, who christened them Aepyornis maximus, or “greatest lofty bird.” The last part of the name was appropriate so far as the eggs are concerned, for they stand as the largest of all eggs. Some idea of their size may be gained by comparisons; the measurements alone do not mean a great deal. The egg of the ostrich, which is usually considered to be quite immense, measures four and one-half by six inches; that of the Aepyornis is not less than nine by thirteen inches, and would hold the whites and yolks of six ostrich eggs! The size seems even greater when we say that it would hold the contents of more than twelve dozen hens’ eggs or thirty thousands of the tiny, bean-like eggs of the hummingbird. Had there been giants in the old days, as fairy tales and occasional newspaper articles seek to convince us, they would have had no trouble in satisfying their breakfast appetites with a couple of Aepyornis eggs, poached. Fortunately for Aepyornis, in his day there were neither giants nor newspapers; had either existed he doubtless would have been exterminated by hunters long before his time.

Despite the excellence of their preservation, relics of the giant birds of New Zealand and Madagascar are not easily seen by the student. There are fine collections at Harvard University, and the American Museum in New York, and in museums in Europe and New Zealand, but there are few, if any Moa eggs in the United States. Specimens of this sort are very expensive; Aepyornis eggs have sold in London for as high as two hundred pounds (about nine hundred seventy-two dollars) and most American museums are desperately poor, being forced to rely on the generosity of private individuals for money with which to buy specimens.

Leaving the giant eastern birds, and the scarcity of collections of their remains, we may transfer our attention to a group of American birds, the huge Phororhacidae of Patagonia. Although far older, geologically these birds were not discovered until long after the Moas and Aepyornis were well known. Even then, it was not believed that so massive a bone as the jaw of Phororhacos could possibly belong to a bird, and it was necessary to find much more complete relics before the case could be proved.

It is one of the ludicrous facts of paleontology that most of the large-sounding names were used up on the Moas, some of which were small, and that Dinornis (terrible bird) was wasted on root-eating creatures that probably were of meekest temperament when not annoyed. In the Patagonian birds, on the other hand, we have species that were really terrible, with their powerful legs, huge heads, sharp, crooked beaks, and strong talons. One of them, Brontornis, or thunder bird, possessed leg bones larger than those of an ox, the drumstick being thirty inches long and two and one-half inches thick. The corresponding bone in the turkey, largest of the domestic birds, the length is but five and one-half inches. The most imposing of the Patagonian birds, however, is the Phorohacos, a creature unique among the bird world. This creature stood seven or eight feet in height, possessed a head larger than that of a horse and a neck as thick, and was armed with huge, sharply hooked beak and long, sharp claws. One of Dr. Lucas’ illustrations shows the skull of the race-horse Lexington placed beneath that of Phororhacos. That of the bird is one inch longer and one and one-half deeper.

The structure of Phororhacos, like that of all other animals, affords an excellent key to its food habits. Probably they did not feed upon roots, as did the Moas, for had they done so their strong, hooked beaks would have been useless, or nearly so. Neither is it probable that they caught fish; the beaks of most fish-eating birds, and particularly of the herons, which are related to Phororhacos, are long, adapted to spearing. Beaks and claws like those of the Patagonian giant are found, in most cases, in birds that feed on either carrion or living animals, or both. In the accompanying illustration the bird is shown as just having killed a small grass-eating animal, and preparing to devour it. Were it to be proved--as it can hardly be--that Phororhacos fed upon carrion alone, the restoration would have to be modified greatly, in appearance though not in proportion. Carrion eaters seldom have feathers on the upper part of the neck and the head, as may be seen by examining such notorious eaters of dead flesh as the vultures or “buzzards.” But the designer of the original restoration, as life-drawings of extinct animals are called, was satisfied to consider his subject as a swift-running bird of prey that preferred fresh killed meat, and did the killing itself.

Phororhacos preparing to devour its prey.

(After Lucas.)]

FOOTNOTES:

Lucas, Animals of the Past, 1st Ed., p. 143. Note that, since the Moas were on the decline when man appeared in their environment, and they had no other powerful enemies, the huge legs could hardly have had defence as their chief function.

This is true of the United States National Museum, at Washington, where the customary appropriation for securing specimens is $10,000 per year. At this national institution it is not rare for employees to draw upon their own small resources in order to secure particularly desirable collections. The same condition is to be found in other museums of the country, excepting the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It, though privately endowed, is housed by the city of New York, and is the largest and best supported museum in the western hemisphere.

Transcriber’s Note:

- Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (italics).

- Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which they appeared.

- Illustrations were moved to the ends of the paragraphs in which they appeared. The list of illustrations was not in the original text. Plate V was originally untitled.

- Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

- Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.

- Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following changes:

Page 6: “elk whose carcases” to “elk whose carcasses” Page 9: “He loked somewhat” to “He looked somewhat” Page 10: “But, bizarre though The” to “But, bizarre though the” Page 15: “the natural percursors” to “the natural precursors” Page 18: “their senile aderrations” to “their senile aberrations” Page 21: “active than the diosaurs” to “active than the dinosaurs” Page 23: “an idea altogether to” to “an idea altogether too” Page 30: “loked more like a gigantic” to “looked more like a gigantic” Page 34: “survivals were of smalll” to “survivals were of small” Page 35: “they swam about seaching” to “they swam about searching” Page 42: “with greater ease than has” to “with greater ease than had” Page 42: “But in all probalility” to “But in all probability” Page 44: “uncertain though the oirgin” to “uncertain though the origin” Page 52: “weather, bacteria, and carrrion” to “weather, bacteria, and carrion” Page 54: “year of 1838, whie” to “year of 1838, while” Page 54: “especially a man, aproached” to “especially a man, approached” Page 54: “they were very sure if” to “they were very sure of” Page 54: “in a quite a different” to “in a quite different” Page 55: “and that they belond” to “and that they belonged” Page 58: “birds sought the pace” to “birds sought the place” Page 59: “turned to destroying hemselves” to “turned to destroying themselves” Page 60: “studied by Goeffroy St-Hilaire” to “studied by Geoffroy St-Hilaire” Page 62: “and two and one-haf” to “and two and one-half”