FEATHERED GIANTS

Nearly every group of animals has its giants, its species which tower above their fellows as Goliath of Gath stood head and shoulders above the Philistine hosts; and while some of these are giants only in comparison with their fellows, belonging to families whose members are short of stature, others are sufficiently great to be called giants under any circumstances. Some of these giants live to-day, some have but recently passed away, and some ceased to be long ages before man trod this earth. The most gigantic of mammals—the whales—still survive, and the elephant of to-day suffers but little in comparison with the mammoth of yesterday; the monstrous Dinosaurs, greatest of all reptiles—greatest, in fact, of all animals that have walked the earth—flourished thousands upon thousands of years ago. As for birds, some of the giants among them are still living, some existed long geologic periods ago, and a few have so recently vanished from the scene that their memory still lingers amid the haze of tradition. The best known among these, as well as the most recent in point of time, are the Moas of New Zealand, first brought to notice by the Rev. W. Colenso, later on Bishop of New Zealand, one of the many missionaries to whom Science is under obligations. Early in 1838, Bishop Colenso, while on a missionary visit to the East Cape region, heard from the natives of Waiapu tales of a monstrous bird, called Moa, having the head of a man, that inhabited the mountain-side some eighty miles away. This mighty bird, the last of his race, was said to be attended by two equally huge lizards that kept guard while he slept, and on the approach of man wakened the Moa, who immediately rushed upon the intruders and trampled them to death. None of the Maoris had seen this bird, but they had seen and somewhat irreverently used for making parts of their fishing tackle, bones of its extinct relatives, and these bones they declared to be as large as those of an ox.

About the same time another missionary, the Rev. Richard Taylor, found a bone ascribed to the Moa, and met with a very similar tradition among the natives of a near-by district, only, as the foot of the rainbow moves away as we move toward it, in his case the bird was said to dwell in quite a different locality from that given by the natives of East Cape. While, however, the Maoris were certain that the Moa still lived, and to doubt its existence was little short of a crime, no one had actually seen it, and as time went on and the bird still remained unseen by any explorer, hope became doubt and doubt certainty, until it even became a mooted question whether such a bird had existed within the past ten centuries, to say nothing of having lived within the memory of man.

But if we do not know the living birds, their remains are scattered broadcast over hillside and plain, concealed in caves, buried in the mud of swamps, and from these we gain a good idea of their size and structure, while chance has even made it possible to know something of their color and general appearance. This chance was the discovery of a few specimens, preserved in exceptionally dry caves on the South Island, which not only had some of the bones still united by ligaments, but patches of skin clinging to the bones, and bearing numerous feathers of a chestnut color tipped with white. These small, straggling, rusty feathers are not much to look at, but when we reflect that they have been preserved for centuries without any care whatever, while the buffalo bugs have devoured our best Smyrna rugs in spite of all possible precautions, our respect for them increases.

From the bones we learn that there were a great many kinds of Moas, twenty at least, ranging in size from those little larger than a turkey to that giant among giants, Dinornis maximus, which stood at least ten feet high,[10] or two feet higher than the largest ostrich, and may well claim the distinction of being the tallest of all known birds. We also learn from the bones that not only were the Moas flightless, but that many of them were absolutely wingless, being devoid even of such vestiges of wings as we find in the Cassowary or Apteryx. But if Nature deprived these birds of wings, she made ample amends in the matter of legs, those of some species, the Elephant-footed Moa, Pachyornis elephantopus, for example, being so massively built as to cause one to wonder what the owner used them for, although the generally accepted theory is that they were used for scratching up the roots of ferns on which the Moas are believed to have fed. And if a blow from an irate ostrich is sufficient to fell a man, what must have been the kicking power of an able-bodied Moa? Beside this bird the ostrich would appear as slim and graceful as a gazelle beside a prize ox.

The Moas were confined to New Zealand, some species inhabiting the North Island, some the South, very few being common to both, and from these peculiarities of distribution geologists deduce that at some early period in the history of the earth the two islands formed one, that later on the land subsided, leaving the islands separated by a strait, and that since this subsidence there has been sufficient time for the development of the species peculiar to each island. 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.

What Nature spared man finished, and legends of Moa hunts and Moa feasts still lingered among the Maoris when the white man came and began in turn the extermination of the Maori. The theory has been advanced, with much to support it, that the big birds were eaten off the face of the earth by an earlier race than the Maoris, and that after the extirpation of the Moas the craving for flesh naturally led to cannibalism. But by whomsoever the destruction was wrought, the result was the same, the habitat of these feathered giants knew them no longer, while multitudes of charred bones, interspersed with fragments of egg-shells, bear testimony to former barbaric feasts.

It is a far cry from New Zealand to Madagascar, but thither must we go, for that island was, pity we cannot say is, inhabited by a race of giant birds from whose eggs it has been thought may have been hatched the Roc of Sindbad. Arabian tales, as we all know, locate the Roc either in Madagascar or in some adjacent island to the north and east, and it is far from unlikely that legends of the Æpyornis, backed by the substantial proof of its enormous eggs, may have been the slight foundation of fact whereon the story-teller erected his structure of fiction. True, the Roc of fable was a gigantic bird of prey capable of bearing away an elephant in its talons, while the Æpyornis has shed its wings and shrunk to dimensions little larger than an ostrich, but this is the inevitable result of closer acquaintance and the application of a two-foot rule.

Like the Moa the Æpyornis seems to have lived in tradition long after it became extinct, for a French history of Madagascar, published as early as 1658 makes mention of a large bird, or kind of ostrich, said to inhabit the southern end of the island. Still, in spite of bones having been found that bear evident traces of the handiwork of man, it is possible that this and other reports were due to the obvious necessity of having some bird to account for the presence of the eggs.

The actual introduction of the Æpyornis to science took place in 1834, when a French traveller sent Jules Verreaux, the ornithologist, a sketch of a huge egg, saying that he had seen two of that size, one sawed in twain to make bowls, the other, traversed by a stick, serving in the preparation of rice uses somewhat in contrast with the proverbial fragility of egg-shells. A little later another traveller procured some fragments of egg-shells, but it was not until 1851 that any entire eggs were obtained, when two were secured, and with a few bones sent to France, where Geoffroy St. Hilaire bestowed upon them the name of Æpyornis maximus (the greatest lofty bird). Maximus the eggs remain, for they still hold the record for size; but so far as the bird that is supposed to have laid them is concerned, the name was a little premature, for other and larger species subsequently came to hand. Between the Æpyornithes and the Moas Science has had a hard time, for the supply of big words was not large enough to go around, and some had to do duty twice. In the way of generic names we have Dinornis, terrible bird; Æpyornis, high bird; Pachyornis, stout bird; and Brontornis, thunder bird, while for specific names there are robustus, maximus, titan; gravis, heavy; immanis, enormous; crassus, stout; ingens, great; and elephantopus, elephant-footed—truly a goodly array of large-sounding words. But to return to the big eggs! Usually we look upon those of the ostrich as pretty large, but an ostrich egg measures 4-1/2 by 6 inches, while that of the Æpyornis is 9 by 13 inches; or, to put it another way, it would hold the contents of six ostrichs' eggs, or one hundred and forty-eight hens' eggs, or thirty thousand humming birds' eggs; and while this is very much smaller than a waterbutt, it is still as large as a bucket, and one or two such eggs might suffice to make an omelet for Gargantua himself.

The size of an egg is no safe criterion of the size of the bird that laid it, for a large bird may lay a small egg, or a small bird a large one. Comparing the egg of the great Moa with that of our Æpyornis one might think the latter much the larger bird, say twelve feet in height, when the facts in the case are that while there was no great difference in the weight of the two, that difference, and a superiority of at least two feet in height, are in favor of the bird that laid the smaller egg. The record of large eggs, however, belongs to the Apteryx, a New Zealand bird smaller than a hen, though distantly related to the Moas, which lays an egg about one-third of its own weight, measuring 3 by 5 inches; perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the bird lays but two.

Although most of the eggs of these big birds that have been found have literally been unearthed from the muck of swamps, now and then one comes to light in a more interesting manner as, for example, when a perfect egg of Æpyornis was found afloat after a hurricane, bobbing serenely up and down with the waves near St. Augustine's Bay, or when an egg of the Moa was exhumed from an ancient Maori grave, where for years it had lain unharmed, safely clasped between the skeleton fingers of the occupant. So far very few of these huge eggs have made their way to this country, and the only egg of Æpyornis now on this side of the water is the property of a private individual.

Most recent in point of discovery, but oldest in point of time, are the giant birds from Patagonia, which are burdened with the name of PhororhacidÆ, a name that originated in an error, although the error may well be excused. The first fragment of one of these great birds to come to light was a portion of the lower jaw, and this was so massive, so un-bird-like, that the finder dubbed it Phororhacos, and so it must remain.

It is a pity that all the large names were used up before this group of birds was discovered, and it is particularly unfortunate that Dinornis, terrible bird, was applied to the root-eating Moas, for these Patagonian birds, with their massive limbs, huge heads and hooked beaks, were truly worthy of such a name; and although in nowise related to the eagles, they may in habit have been terrestrial birds of prey. Not all the members of this family are giants, for as in other groups, some are big and some little, but the largest among them might be styled the Daniel Lambert of the feathered race. Brontornis, for example, the thunder bird, or as the irreverent translate it, the thundering big bird, had leg-bones larger than those of an ox, the drumstick measuring 30 inches in length by 2-1/2 inches in diameter, or 4-1/4 inches across the ends, while the tarsus, or lower bone of the leg to which the toes are attached, was 16-1/2 inches long and 5-1/2 inches wide where the toes join on. Bear this in mind the next time you see a large turkey, or compare these bones with those of an ostrich: but lest you may forget, it may be said that the same bone of a fourteen-pound turkey is 5-1/2 inches long, and one inch wide at either end, while that of an ostrich measures 19 inches long and 2 inches across the toes, or 3 at the upper end.

If Brontornis was a heavy-limbed bird, he was not without near rivals among the Moas, while the great Phororhacos, one of his contemporaries, was not only nearly as large, but quite unique in build. Imagine a bird seven or eight feet in height from the sole of his big, sharp-clawed feet, to the top of his huge head, poise this head on a neck as thick as that of a horse, arm it with a beak as sharp as an icepick and almost as formidable, and you have a fair idea of this feathered giant of the ancient pampas. The head indeed was truly colossal for that of a bird, measuring 23 inches in length by 7 in depth, while that of the racehorse Lexington, and he was a good-sized horse, measures 22 inches long by 5-1/2 inches deep. The depth of the jaw is omitted because we wish to make as good a case as possible for the bird, and the jaw of a horse is so deep as to give him an undue advantage in that respect.

We can only speculate on the food of these great birds, and for aught we know to the contrary they may have caught fish, fed upon carrion, or used their powerful feet and huge beaks for grubbing roots; but if they were not more or less carnivorous, preying upon such reptiles, mammals and other birds as came within reach, then nature apparently made a mistake in giving them such a formidable equipment of beak and claw. So far as habits go we might be justified in calling them cursorial birds of prey.

We really know very little about these Patagonian giants, but they are interesting not only from their great size and astounding skulls, but because of the early age (Miocene) at which they lived and because in spite of their bulk they are in nowise related to the ostriches, but belong near the heron family. As usual, we have no idea why they became extinct, but in this instance man is guiltless, for they lived and died long before he made his appearance, and the ever-convenient hypothesis "change of climate" may be responsible for their disappearance.

Something, perhaps, remains to be said concerning the causes which seem to have led to the development of these giant birds, as well as the reasons for their flightless condition and peculiar distribution, for it will be noticed that, with the exception of the African and South American ostriches the great flightless birds as a rule are, and were, confined to uninhabited or sparsely populated islands, and this is equally true of the many small, but equally flightless birds. It is a seemingly harsh law of nature that all living beings shall live in a more or less active struggle with each other and with their surroundings, and that those creatures which possess some slight advantage over their fellows in the matter of speed, or strength, or ability to adapt themselves to surrounding conditions, shall prosper at the expense of the others. In the power of flight, birds have a great safeguard against changes of climate with their accompanying variations in the supply of food, and, to a lesser extent, against their various enemies, including man. This power of flight, acquired early in their geological history, has enabled birds to spread over the length and breadth of the globe as no other group of animals has done, and to thrive under the most varying conditions, and it would seem that if this power were lost it must sooner or later work harm. Now to-day we find no great wingless birds in thickly populated regions, or where beasts of prey abound; the ostriches roam the desert wastes of Arabia, Africa and South America where men are few and savage beasts scarce, and against these is placed a fleetness of foot inherited from ancestors who acquired it before man was. The heavy cassowaries dwell in the thinly inhabited, thickly wooded islands of Malaysia, where again there are no large carnivores and where the dense vegetation is some safeguard against man; the emu comes from the Australian plains, where also there are no four-footed enemies[11] and where his ancestors dwelt in peace before the advent of man. And the same things are true of the Moas, the Æpyornithes, the flightless birds of Patagonia, the recent dodo of Mauritius and the solitaire of Rodriguez, each and all of which flourished in places where there were no men and practically no other enemies. Hence we deduce that absence of enemies is the prime factor in the existence of flightless birds,[12] although presence of food is an essential, while isolation, or restriction to a limited area, plays an important part by keeping together those birds, or that race of birds, whose members show a tendency to disuse their wings. It will be seen that such combinations of circumstances will most naturally be found on islands whose geological history is such that they have had no connection with adjacent continents, or such a very ancient connection that they were not then peopled with beasts of prey, while subsequently their distance from other countries has prevented them from receiving such population by accident in recent times and has also retarded the arrival of man.

Once established, flightlessness and size play into one another's hands; the flightless bird has no limit placed on its size[13] while granted a food supply and immunity from man; the larger the bird the less the necessity for wings to escape from four-footed foes. So long as the climate was favorable and man absent, the big, clumsy bird might thrive, but upon the coming of man, or in the face of any unfavorable change of climate, he would be at a serious disadvantage and hence whenever either of these two factors has been brought to bear against them the feathered giants have vanished.

REFERENCES

There is a fine collection of mounted skeletons of various species of Moas in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Mass., and another in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. A few other skeletons and numerous bones are to be found in other institutions, but the author is not aware of any egg being in this country. Specimens of the Æpyornis are rare in this country, but Mr. Robert Gilfort, of Orange, N.J., is the possessor of a very fine egg. A number of eggs have been sold in London, the prices ranging from £200 down to £42, this last being much less than prices paid for eggs of the great auk. But then, the great auk is somewhat of a fad, and there are just enough eggs in existence to bring one into the market every little while. Besides, the number of eggs of the great auk is a fixed quantity, while no one knows how many more of Æpyornis remain to be discovered in the swamps of Madagascar. No specimens of the gigantic Patagonian birds are now in this country, but a fine example of one of the smaller forms, Pelycornis, including the only breast-bone yet found, is in the Museum of Princeton University.

The largest known tibia of a Moa, the longest bird-bone known, is in the collection of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand; it is 3 feet 3 inches long. This, however, is exceptional, the measurements of the leg-bones of an ordinary Dinornis maximus being as follows: Femur, 18 inches; tibia, 32 inches; tarsus, 19 inches, a total of 5 feet 9 inches. The egg measures 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches.

There is plenty of literature, and very interesting literature, about the Moas, but, unfortunately, the best of it is not always accessible, being contained in the "New Zealand Journal of Science" and the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute." The volume of "Transactions" for 1893, being vol. xxvi., contains a very full list of articles relating to the Moas, compiled by Mr. A. Hamilton; it will be found to commence on page 229. There is a good article on Moa in Newton's "Dictionary of Birds," a book that should be in every library.