A passage from Temple’s Travels in Peru has been quoted as exhibiting exaggeration in the description of the condor surpassing anything that can be laid to Polo’s charge here; but that is, in fact, only somewhat heavy banter directed against our traveller’s own narrative. (See Travels in Various Parts of Peru, 1830, II. 414-417.)

Recently fossil bones have been found in New Zealand, which seem to bring us a step nearer to the realization of the Rukh.  Dr. Haast discovered in a swamp at Glenmark in the province of Otago, along with remains of the Dinornis or Moa, some bones (femur, ungual phalanges, and rib) of a gigantic bird which he pronounces to be a bird of prey, apparently allied to the Harriers, and calls Harpagornis.  He supposes it to have preyed upon the Moa, and as that fowl is calculated to have been 10 feet and upwards in height, we are not so very far from the elephant-devouring Rukh. (See Comptes Rendus, Ac. des Sciences 1872, p. 1782; and Ibis, October 1872, p. 433.) This discovery may possibly throw a new light on the traditions of the New Zealanders.  For Professor Owen, in first describing the Dinornis in 1839, mentioned that the natives had a tradition that the bones belonged to a bird of the eagle kind. (See Eng.  Cyc. Nat.  Hist. sub. v. Dinornis.) And Sir Geo. Grey appears to have read a paper, 23rd October 1872,[4] which was the description by a Maori of the Hokiol, an extinct gigantic bird of prey of which that people have traditions come down from their ancestors, said to have been a black hawk of great size, as large as the Moa.

I have to thank Mr. Arthur Grote for a few words more on that most interesting subject, the discovery of a real fossil Ruc in New Zealand.  He informs me (under date 4th December 1874) that Professor Owen is now working on the huge bones sent home by Dr. Haast, “and is convinced that they belonged to a bird of prey, probably (as Dr. Haast suggested) a Harrier, double the weight of the Moa, and quite capable therefore of preying on the young of that species.  Indeed, he is disposed to attribute the extinction of the Harpagornis to that of the Moa, which was the only victim in the country which could supply it with a sufficiency of food.”

One is tempted to add that if the Moa or Dinornis of New Zealand had its Harpagornis scourge, the still greater Aepyornis of Madagascar may have had a proportionate tyrant, whose bones (and quills ?) time may bring to light.  And the description given by Sir Douglas Forsyth on page 542, of the action of the Golden Eagle of Kashgar in dealing with a wild boar, illustrates how such a bird as our imagined Harpagornis Aepyornithon might master the larger pachydermata, even the elephant himself, without having to treat him precisely as the Persian drawing at p. 415 represents.