G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 281 



ligation has recently brought to light the skeleton referred 

 to. It is by no means as complete as the one found by him 

 in one of the other caverns, but has some interesting pecul- 

 iarities. The dimensions were those of a man of large size, 

 supposed to be nearly six feet and a half in height, a charac- 

 teristic which is shared by the other specimen. Like this, it 

 showed that the primitive people inhabiting these caverns 

 were in the habit of burying their dead upon a hearth, orna- 

 mented with trinkets, and accompanied by their weapons. 

 The ashes and earth of the hearth were filled with fragments 

 of bones, the remains of repasts either those of every-day 

 life or funeral feasts. 6 J5, A2wil 21, 1873, 1027. 



GEOLOGICAL AGE OF THE MOA. 



Dr. Haast, in discussing the subject of the moas {Binornis) 

 and moa hunters of New Zealand, advances the opinion that 

 the various species of moa began to appear in New Zealand 

 in the post-pliocene period, and that they have been extinct 

 for so long a time that no trustworthy traditions have been 

 handed down to the present day concerning them. He thinks 

 also that a race of Autoc(ho?ies, probably of Polynesian ori- 

 gin, was contemporaneous with the moa, by whom it was 

 hunted and exterminated. A species of wild dog existed at 

 the same time, which was likewise killed out by the moa 

 hunters. These people, he thinks, were low in civilization, 

 only using rudely chipped stone implements. The Maoris, 

 their descendants, on the other hand, had, when the earliest 

 Europeans arrived in New Zealand, attained the art of manu- 

 facturing finely polished stone implements and weapons. He 

 believes there is satisfactory evidence that the moa hunters 

 were not cannibals, and that they cooked their food. They 

 must have had access to the northern islands, where they 

 procured obsidian, and likewise must have traveled far into 

 the interior of the island to obtain the flint of which their 

 stone implements were made. Many of these early imple- 

 ments were of nephrite and greenstone. 13 A, JVbvember 1, 

 1872,414. 



PEEHISTOEIC CANNIBALISM IN FLORIDA. 



Professor "Wyman has concluded, as the result of explora- 

 tions among the shell mounds of Florida during the past 



