De Quatkefages. — On Moas and Moa-hunters. 37 



bones and beds without bones often overlay each other, some- 

 times one, sometimes the other, being uppermost. ( ?J ) The 

 increasing scarcity of moas at a certain period, the migration 

 of the people in consequence, the fortuitous association of two 

 kinds of food at the same feast, the necessity of having recourse 

 to a food which up till then had been disdained, explain in 

 the most simple manner the difference of the results furnished 

 by excavations made in neighbouring localities by equally 

 competent explorers. But it is evident that the general 

 result was irreconcilable with Dr. Haast's interpretation. 



V. 



Among the various propositions that L)r. Haast has main- 

 tained, that which touches on the history of the dog must 

 arrest our attention. We have seen that in his third memoir 

 he admits the existence of a wild dog cotemporary with 

 Dinornis, and denies absolutely that the moa-hunters had pos- 

 sessed domestic dogs.( so ) On this last point the learned 

 New-Zealander is far from being consistent with himself. 

 In his earlier researches he had only found a few dog-bones 

 amongst the remains of feasts, and he explained this scarcity 

 by saying that this animal was only occasionally eaten — when, 

 for instance, the owner was short of provisions. ( 81 ) Here, 

 therefore, he acknowledged that the domestication of the dog 

 was customary with the moa-hunters. He added, it is true, 

 that perhaps they were also hunted as game, which supposes 

 that this animal lived in a wild state ; and it is at this last 

 opinion that he seems to have stopped short. 



But, if this hypothesis were the true one, there would have 

 been found, at some time or another, the bones of the dog 

 associated with those of Dinornis, his cotemporaries. But 

 we have said already that no land-mammal fossils have yet 

 been met with in New Zealand. ( s2 ) The dog is no excep- 



(79.) Moa-bones were never found unassociated with beds of shells ; 

 and, although shell-beds did occur without moa-bones, these just as often 

 underlaid beds with moa-bones as overlaid them (" Notes on the Maori 

 Cooking-places at the Mouth of the Shag River," by Captain P. W. Hutton, 

 Transactions, vol. viii., p. 105). 



(80.) Fourth and fifth propositions. 



) " Either when its owner was short of provisions, or per- 

 haps' . . . ." (" Address," loc. cit., p. 89). 



(82.) In an early article on the moas, speaking of the small number 

 of mammals found in New Zealand, and of the absence of fossils of animals 

 of this class, I forgot to add the epithet " terrestrial." The reader probably 

 filled up the gap. Fossil remains of cetaceous and other aquatic main 

 have been found from time to time in New Zealand. (Haast, " Geology," 

 &c, chs. x. and xi.) I mentioned elsewhere that the cetaceans play a 

 part in the Maori traditions (" Polynesiens et leurs Migrations," oh. 

 iv.), and that all animals of this kind cast up on the shore belonged 



