THE BROWNSVILLE DAILY HERALD — AUGUST 04, 1902
St. Augustine, July.—An egg of the giant bird, epyornis [the elephant bird], found floating in St. Augustine Bay, southwest of Madagascar, has given rise to supposition that living specimens of this creature, which hitherto it was thought became extinct in Pleiocene times, may yet be found in the interior of the island, and a party of Germans, headed by Gottleib Adolf Krause, have undertaken, an expedition with the object of tracing it to its home or solving the problem of existence.
The first acquaintance with the bird was made through Captain Abordie, the master of a French sailing vessel, who in 1850 was surprised to find the natives using as a vessel a fragment of a huge egg shell. He purchased the piece, and upon offering a reward for a whole egg received in a few days from the natives one which had been found in the dry bed of a river. Since then a number of eggs, together with some bones, have been recovered from the alluvial deposits of the island. These eggs, which are now in the possession of several museums, measured over a foot in length, the largest one being 14x9 inches in diameter. They are seven times larger than an ostrich egg, 184 time larger than a hen’s egg and 20,308 times larger than a wren’s egg. One of them would supply a square meal for a well-patronized country boarding-house, or, it is estimated, for sixty persons.
From— The Brownsville Daily Herald. (Brownsville, Tex.), 04 Aug. 1902. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
