150 Transactions. — Zoology. 



mon ancestor as yet unknown, and we thus get tlie following 

 classificatory diagram : — 



Palaeontology throws very little light on the suhject. All 

 the species — except A. antiqiius, which is Pliocene only — have 

 been found in the Pleistocene peat deposits, and all of them 

 except six — D. alius, D. viaximus, D. excelsus, D. validus, 

 D. torosus, and P. i^enus — have been found in recent Maori 

 cooking-places. 



The following species from the older Pleistocene beds at 

 Motunau are represented in the Wellington Museum : D. 

 2)otens, D. torosus, S. rheides, S. crassus, S. casuarinus, E. 

 elepliantoims, E. ponderosus, and E. gravis ; and the bones of 

 the three species of Euryapterux have the proportions of the 

 most robust specimens found in younger deposits. Of the 

 Pliocene species we know but little. Professor Owen has re- 

 ferred the footprints sent to him, in the sandstone from Poverty 

 Bay, to D. ingens, D. strut! limdes, and P. droviioides. Those 

 described by Archdeacon Williams and Mr. Justice Gillies 

 were made by a bird not larger than A. didiformis, which had 

 a foot about Sin. in length. The bones of A. antiquus found by 

 Mr. Stubbs under the lava-stream at Timaru are the oldest 

 known moa-bones, and: they belong to a species which was 

 smaller than any which lived subsequently in the South 

 Island." 



It seems, therefore, that very little change took place in the 

 moas subsequent to the date of the oldest beds at Glenmark 

 and Motunau. No new species, or even varieties, were formed, 

 but possibly some of the larger forms of Dinornis may have 

 died out. But even this is not certain, for the large species of 

 Dinornis are rare everywhere, and it is possible that they ma}' 

 have lived away from the coast, in which case we can easil}' 

 explain the absence of their bones in the Maori cooking-places, 

 for, except in central Otago, it is only the sand-dunes along 



* Mr. Forbes is mistaken in saying of these bones that " the largest, 

 nearly Sin. in length, were undoubtedly portions of Dinornis bones of one of 

 the greater forms" (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxiii., p. 367). 1 have ex- 

 amined ]\Ir. Stubbs's collection, and there is in it no evidence of a moa 

 larger than A. antiqints. 



