HuTTON. — On the Moas of Neiv Zealand. 155 



the first to recognise that the moa had been killed and eaten 

 by man. In 1852 he obtained more proofs of this at Awamoa, 

 near Oamaru," and he further ascertained that the Maoris 

 had " traditions concerning the existence of the moa and the 

 use of it by them for food, of its bones for implements, and its 

 feathers for ornaments."! In 1851 he read a paper on the 

 subject to the New Zealand Society which, I believe, was 

 never published ; and in the discussion that followed the 

 reading to the Zoological Society of London, in 1856, of 

 Professor Owen's paper on the Awamoa Collection, Mr. 

 Mantell, who was present, successfully combated the then 

 prevailing idea in England that the moa was Pleistocene 

 only. In 1864 Sir W. Buller published a letter in the 

 Zoologist, in which he said that the moa is now extinct, 

 but was contemporaneous with the Maoris, as is proved by 

 the broken and calcined bones in the refuse of their feasts, 

 and by "the rude history of the bird preserved in Maori 

 tradition." In the same year the skeleton of D. jwtens, which 

 is now in the York Museum, was found at Tiger Hill ; and, as 

 this skeleton had portions of the skin and ligaments attached, 

 it completed the reversal of opinion among English naturalists. 

 In June of that year Mr. Allis read a paper about it to the 

 Linnean Society, when the general opinion of the meeting 

 was that probably the bird had been living within ten years ;]: 

 and in 1868 Mr. B. Newman concluded that the last moa 

 died in about the year 1800 or, perhaps, later. S 



But in the same year the Hon. W. Mantell, in a lecture 

 to the New Zealand Institute, pointed out that the extermina- 

 tion of the moa must have taken place within a very short 

 period after the appearance of man on these Islands, as the 

 allusions to the bird in the most ancient Maori traditions are 

 very slight and obscure. He also said that nephrite appears 

 to have been discovered at a later date than the extinction of 

 the moas, because it was never found in the Maori cooking- 

 places with moa-bones. ' 



Three years later Sir J. von Haast published his papers on 

 " Moas and Moa-hunters,"^ in which he denied the existence 

 of any Maori traditions about the moa, and held that the birds 

 had been exterminated by men "most probably belonging to 

 a different race from the present native inhabitants of the 

 Islands " (p. 68) — a race to whom not only was greenstone un- 

 known, but who had not even acquired the art of grinding 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxi., p. 440. 

 t Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. v., p. 95. 

 \ Zoologist, 1864, p. 9195. 

 § Zoologist, ISGS, p. 1354. 

 li Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. i., p. IS. 

 11 Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. iv., p. GG. 



