36 Transactions. — Zoology. 



the existence of two races who inhabited New Zealand before 

 the arrival of Europeans, and upon the nature of these two 

 races, are well founded. Melanesian negroes did, in fact, 

 occupy New Zealand before the Maoris. On this point the 

 craniological observations have confirmed what I wrote eleven 

 years before the publication of Dr. Haast's memoirs. ( 7C ) But 

 this ethnical duality of New Zealand populations in no 

 way involves as a consequence the destruction of the moa 

 by the first occupants. In Europe the people of the Stone 

 Age did not exterminate the reindeer, the chamois, nor yet 

 the urus. 



To maintain his opinion, and to throw back the extinction 

 of moas into a past which, he says, cannot be calculated even 

 by hundreds of years, (") Haast does not fail to appeal to 

 the results of his excavations in the Sumner Cave. He de- 

 scribes the cave as enclosing two beds, which, according to 

 him, are entirely distinct. In the lower stratum the ovens 

 were found to contain numerous moa-bones, which must have 

 been the remains of the Melanesian feasts. The higher 

 stratum, he affirms, only contained the shells of various mol- 

 lusca, which had been eaten by other natives, who were the 

 ancestors of the existing Maoris. Mr. McKay, member of 

 the Geological Survey, who aided Dr. Haast in his researches, 

 has published on his part a paper in which he professes almost 

 the same opinions as his chief. ( 78 ) 



But the difference on which so much stress is laid by 

 Messrs. Haast and McKay, even if clearly proved, does not 

 occur elsewhere. In several places an intermixture of shells 

 and moa-bones has been met with. Moreover, the locality 

 studied first by these geologists was explored later on by Cap- 

 tain Hutton and Mr. Booth, who had long been familiar with 

 researches of this kind. Thus the facts established by them 

 contradict in the most decided manner, and on several dif- 

 ferent points, the reports of the first explorers. Hutton and 

 Booth have most often found moa-bones associated with beds 

 of shells; they have proved over and over again that beds with 



(7G.) A. cle Quatrefages, " Les Polynesiens et leurs Migrations " 

 (Revue des Dcux-Mondes, February, 1864). These articles, amplified, 

 and accompanied by notes and four maps, were later on incorporated in 

 one volume, which appeared under the same title. A. de Quatrefages and 

 E. Hamy (" Crania ethmca," p. 291). Among other proofs of the presence 

 of two races in New Zealand, the Museum possesses a dried head of a 

 Maori chief, whose origin is attested by the tattoo-marks, and whose hair 

 is that of a pure Melanesian. I had it engraved in a book which I men- 

 tioned some way back ("Homines Fossiles et Homines Sauvages," pp. 486 

 and 487, figs. 171 and 172). 



(77.) Loc. cit. (Transactions, vol. vii., p. SI). 



(78.) " On the Identity of the Moa-hunters with the Present Maori 

 Eace " (Transactions, vol. vii., p. 98). 



