Chapter IX: Feathered Giants

[following a section on the Moa of New Zealand]

It is a far cry from New Zealand to Madagascar, but thither we must 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 rule¹.

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, used 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 hand². 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 those big eggs! Usually we look upon those of the ostrich as pretty large, but an ostrich egg measures 4½ 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 ostriches' eggs, or one hundred and forty-eight hens' eggs, or thirty thousand humming birds' eggs; and while this is very much smaller than a water-butt³, it is still as large as a bucket, and one or two such eggs might suffice to make an omelet for Gargantua himself. About thirty eggs of the Æpyornis have been discovered and a number of them have found their way to this country, with the natural result that their market price has dropped from five or six hundred dollars to one hundred and fifty or less.

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 Bay⁴, 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.

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Notes on this text

1. I'm not sure what he means by a "two-foot rule;" my best guess, based on surfing the web, is that it has something to do with not staring too closely at details (i.e., stand two feet away). By all means, tell me if you think you know what he's talking about here!



2. Presumably, the larger species to which the author refers have been subsumed under Aepyornis maximus since this selection was written. The only bird known to Science which compares in mass with the Vorompatra is the largest of the Australian Dromornithids.



3. A "water-butt" is a cask or barrel, and the term probably elicited fewer snickers back when barrels were common household items.



4. St. Augustine's Bay is on the southwest coast of Madagascar, just below Toliara; at least two have washed up on Australia's western shores, most recently in 1993.