HuTTON. — On the Moas of Ne70 Zealand. 169 



remains have been found is shut in from the sea on all sides by 

 ranges of mountains, and is, in consequence, by far the driest 

 in New Zealand. Mr. Vincent Pyke, ^Yho was Secretary for 

 the Otago Goldfields in 1863, speaking of the remarkable pre- 

 servative powers of the dry air in this district, says, " On one 

 occasion I was called upon to hold an inquest on the body of 

 a child which was identified as having been the subject of a 

 previous inquest before myself some weeks previously. It had 

 been exhumed from the grave, and appeared slightly mum- 

 mified, but was otherwise as sound as the day it was buried. 

 On another occasion a boy drowned in the Clutha Eiver on the 

 1st January was picked up in the following March on a sandy 

 beach 12ft. above the then level of the river, slightly covered 

 with drift sand, but quite fresh and undecomposed, although it 

 had for so long a period been lying exposed to the fierce sun 

 of an extremely hot Dunstan summer."^'' Also, in about 1869 

 the remains of a Maori baby were found in a rock shelter in 

 the same district. It was shown to me in Dunedin in_1872. 

 The skin, hair, ligaments, and some dried-up flesh still re- 

 mained on the bones. This baby must have died previous to 

 the breaking-out of the diggings in 1861, and probably much 

 before that, for no Maoris are known to have lived in the dis- 

 trict or to have visited it since the colony was founded. Skin 

 and ligament, once dried, and protected from the sun, might 

 easily, in this district, be preserved for centuries ; so that these 

 remains prove nothing. 



Conclusion. 



The case seems to me to stand thus : In the North Island 

 we have, at Wanganui and near Whangarei, undoubted proofs 

 that the ancestors of the present Maoris killed and ate moas. 

 The present generation knew the bones to be those of a bird 

 which they called " moa ;" and there are several names of places 

 and of men in which the word " moa " occurs, and these certainly 

 point to a knowledge of the bird. But in the large number of 

 ancient Maori tales and poems which have been collected and 

 published the allusions to the bird are very slight and obscure, 

 and one very ancient poem mentions the moa as having been 

 exterminated before the poem was composed. The so-called 

 traditions of its habits and appearance may be, in large 

 part, later deductions from these words and phrases ; and we 

 must conclude that in the North Island the moa was exter- 

 minated by the Maoris not very long after their arrival in 

 New Zealand — that is, not less than four or five hundred 

 years ago. 



* " The Moa," Wellington, 1890, p. 5. 



