560 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



which I found several, are those of a bnxl which had been 

 cooked and eaten, and they are much broken, and far more 

 decayed than those of my bird. Some of them, however, 

 seem to have been cut to pieces with a sharp implement like 

 a tomahawk, as I do not think breaking the bones with a 

 stone club would have fractured them so cleanly, and stone 

 tools of other kinds would hardly have broken the bones at 

 all. Along with the bones, too, I found broken bottle-glass of 

 two colours, and two pieces of bones of animals, which would 

 indicate that the remains were of comparatively recent date, 

 though both bones are much decayed. 



In the afternoon I passed by the place where my moa- 

 bones were found, and my companion, Mr. L. Anderson, j)icked 

 up a portion of some large animal's jawbone (apparently that of 

 a young ox or horse, as the bone is much decayed), containing 

 three molar teeth, within a few feet of where I had found the 

 bones. A large series of kitchen-middens extends for fully a 

 mile south of the Waikanae Eiver, and these are constantly 

 being disturbed by the wind, so that their contents are 

 scattered over probably twenty or thirty acres of ground. 

 Most of these middens were certainly in use during the 

 whaling days, as all sorts of European articles are found in 

 them. For example, we found on Monday part of a school 

 slate, no doubt imported by the missionaries, and a pair of 

 scissors — articles which indicate a date certainly subsequent 

 to 1830, and probably some years later — as well as hoop-iron, 

 iron bolts, sheet-copper, and fragments of broken glass, 

 crockery, and clay pipes. My eldest son, who has lived at 

 "Waikanae for many years, and taken notice of the drifting of 

 the sandhills, regards the shifting of their position there as 

 much more rapid than at Wanganui, and the date at which 

 the kitchen-middens w^ent out of use as very recent indeed. 

 The're was a great native-fight at a place called Te IJruhi, 

 a little south of the mouth of the Waikanae Eiver, between 

 the years 1835 and 1840 ; and up to that time many Maoris 

 resided there, and no doubt helped to form the middens, 

 which contain a curious mixture of European articles with 

 old Maori ones, such as stone tools, obsidian flakes, and bits 

 of carving. 



Moa-bones have within the last few years been found in the 

 bush ten miles inland of Haw^era, and in the Momahaki, 

 Mangawhera, and Kiwitea valleys, proving that these birds 

 were not confined to open country, but penetrated far into the 

 forests. At Upokongaro, nea,r Wanganui, a large number of 

 bones were lately found in draining a boggy spring, in which 

 the birds had evidently sunk and been smothered. The bones 

 must have belonged to at least a dozen birds, as the tibiae 

 vary in length from 34^in. to about 9in. ; and the difference in 



