De Quateefages.— On Moas and Moa-hunters. 35 



its full appreciation^ 70 ) I have already mentioned how Mr. 

 Stack refuses to assign a too remote antiquity for the destruc- 

 tion of moas. He recognises also that the Maori traditions 

 contain some allusions to these birds. In his infancy he 

 heard of moa-feathers being found on a rock where the last of 

 these brevipennates had hidden itself. Nevertheless he also 

 thinks that perhaps they were cassowary - feathers brought 

 to New Zealand By the ancestors of the Maoris. ( 71 ) We 

 observe that Mr. Stack does not consider the latter as descend- 

 ants of the autochthonous moa-hunters, as contended for by 

 Dr. Haast. 



On this last point, besides, the opinions of the New Zea- 

 land geologist appear to have remained stationary. I have 

 reproduced above the terms employed by Dr. Haast in the 

 conclusions of his third memoir. I briefly pointed out all that 

 seemed vague and contradictory about them, in spite of their 

 apparent precision. ( 72 ) In another paper he expresses a very 

 different opinion, and considers the Melanesian negroes as 

 having preceded the Maoris in New Zealand, and attributes 

 to them the extermination of the moa.( 73 ) In support of 

 this new theory be appeals to these very same traditions 

 which he had rejected before in the most positive manner, 

 and which he only became acquainted with through the Eev. 

 Eichard Taylor's work. It is from the latter that he borrows 

 a quotation of Sir George Grey's, whose classical work he does 

 not appear to have read.( 74 ) Finally, in his "Geology of the 

 Province of Canterbury," he distinctly adopts Mr. Colenso's 

 views, and at different times he speaks of the predecessors of 

 the Maoris as autochthonous natives, having lived in the 

 Quaternary period. At the same time he admits that these 

 children of the New Zealand soil had more or less close 

 affinities with the Melanesians.( 7;; ) 



I have too often combated this old idea of the auto- 

 chthonism to make it. necessary to refer to it again here. But 

 quite apart from this question I shall be happy to enter the 

 lists with Dr. Haast. The opinions held by him relative to 



(70.) "An Account of some Enormous Fossil Bones of an Unknown 

 Species of the Class Aves, lately discovered in New Zealand " (" Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History," 1844). 



(71.) " Notes on Moas and Moa-hunters " (Transactions, vol. iv., 

 p. 108). 



( 1 2.) See notes at the foot of the page. 



(73.) "Notes on an Ancient Native Burial-place" (Transactions, 

 vol. vii., p. 91). Haast, later on, insisted on this idea, and sought to 

 show, by what happens in Australia, that very inferior black tribes are 

 familiar with the process of polishing stone ("Geology of the Provinces," 

 &c, ch. xvi., p. 411). 



(74.) " Polynesian Mythology." 



(75.) " Geology," first proposition, p. 430. 



