Otago Institute. 557 



cent and extinct birds, with a notice of the skull of Harpagornis, 

 and some bones representing a new species of Fulica, for which 



many places known to myself even where they could be found — it is to 

 be hoped that the investigation will be made in a thoroughly scientific 

 manner, and that many more facts will be ascertained as to the inter- 

 ment of the moas and the distribution cf the birds than have been 

 evolved in searches hitherto. The extinction of the race of moas seems 

 to have been extraordinary. It must have been by a slow and gradual 

 process. To-day, when in the Museum, Mr. Hamilton called my atten- 

 tion to the diseased condition of some of the rib-bones of the moa speci- 

 mens. Some years ago when I lived in Otago I noticed that as a rule all 

 the moa-bones found in the North presented more or less symptoms of 

 the diseased state of the original bird. There may have been active 

 diseases at work destroying the moas. That is a cause of the destruction 

 of the moa that I think has been rather overlooked, and there is distinct 

 evidence from the examination of the skeletons that there has been some 

 such process at work. Then, again, we have, of course, the destruction of 

 the moas from other natural causes. In a country that I am familiar with — 

 the prairies of North America — as you are all aware, the bison has become 

 nearly extinct — almost absolutely extinct — though I remember that in 

 about 1860 you could see thousands of them scouring over the prairies in 

 all directions; but before that their number was even more abundant. 

 The first thing that led to the destruction of the bisons was the existence 

 of disease to an alarming extent. Nearly all the buffaloes and the deer in 

 that country used to die by hundreds of thousands, and in certain seasons 

 their bodies were heaped up in the river-courses till they became a perfect 

 pestilence to the Indians — for there were no other inhabitants there then — 

 and the devastation caused by that disease was something terrible. One 

 could hardly attribute that disease to the presence of man. However, 

 since then the buffaloes, without breaking up into many varieties or 

 species or forms, have died completely, keeping the characteristics of their 

 species to the very end, when they disappeared. This has not been so 

 with the moas. The moas seemed to have struggled among themselves — 

 to have accommodated their physical forms to their surroundings, to 

 have undergone many changes ; and I should suspect they suffered largely 

 from disease in consequence. Then came the advent of man with his 

 firestick. Probably in some parts of the North Island it did not want 

 man's firestick — the fire came from other sources. With man's interven- 

 tion, anyhow, fire must have done immense damage all over the country. 

 In the interior of Otago we found in the early days heaps of moa-bones 

 scattered over the surface, and if we digged we found them. Among the 

 moa-bones found in the swamps were great masses of charred bones, 

 showing the agent that had been at work in their destruction. Many, 

 no doubt, were destroyed by fire ; and I found in a triangular area 

 alongside the Wakatipu Lake a place where they had evidently been 

 penned in by the fire — stopped in by the scrub that covered the steep 

 mountain on the one side and by the deep lake on the other side, 

 and so, there being no escape, they had perished. When I found these 

 skeletons they were lying as they had been left by the fire ; and so 

 all over the country fire must have exercised a very destructive effect, 

 especially upon the eggs, for no eggs have been found anywhere excepting 

 where they have been accidentally overlain by blown sand, as was the 

 case with the famous eggs found at Cromwell, where we found an egg 

 actually containing chick-bones under 3ft. of sand, on the left-hand side 

 of the Molyneux Eiver at its junction with the Kawarau Eiver at Crom- 

 well. In that instance the egg was embedded in the sand, and escaped. 

 But for that one escape how many thousands must have been destroyed 



