ABSTRACT
The moa is the oddest of birds. It is, as far as we know, the largest bird that ever lived. Not only is it unable to fly (like the other running birds, or Ratitae, such as the ostrich, the emu and the cassowary, which it resembles a little in outline), but it has not the smallest trace of wings. There is not even a sign of the collar-bone with which a vertebrate’s front legs are almost invariably connected to the thorax. It is the truest of bipeds, and its feathers are so primitive that they seem more like hairs.
