2-888-625 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Comparative Sizes of Dinornis, Ostrich, and New Zealander, 1850. '...a lecture on the extinct gigantic birds of New Zealand, by Dr. Mantell, attracted a brilliant and numerous audience to the Royal Institution...[He referred to] the first discovery of the fossil remains of the Dinornis in New Zealand, and then described the collection of remains made by his eldest son, Mr. Walter Mantell, and transmitted to England in 1848..."Unfortunately...the natives soon caught sight of my operations, and came down in shoals, trampling on the bones I had carefully extracted and laid out to dry. The natives affirm that this sand flat to Rangatapu was one of the places first dwelt upon by their ancestors; and this seems not unlikely, for...I found circular beds of ashes, and charcoal, and bones, very ancient, and such as are generally left by the native fires that have been long lighted in the same place". From "Illustrated London News", 1850.