416 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



have given birth to some adjective meaning "large"; a pro- 

 verb would have been formed — "Huge as the moa," "Lost 

 like the losing of the gigantic moa," or something of the kind; 

 but, so far as the legendary mention goes, the moa might have 

 been the size of a sparrow. To try to obtain any information 

 from natives at the present day concerning the moa is to 

 court error ; but when the old chiefs in the North Island were 

 asked, half a century ago, what they knew of the moa, they 

 replied that neither they nor their forefathers knew the moa, 

 for the last moa was destroyed in " the fire of Tamatea" — i.e., 

 in far-away mythological times. Lest this should be thought 

 only to relate to the North Island, I would point out that the 

 Eev. Mr. Stack, our authority on the South Island Maori, denies 

 that the Maori knew anything of the Dinornis, and shows that 

 the saying " Lost as the moa is lost " is to be found in one of 

 their most ancient songs. The Eev. Mr. Wohlers, also, the 

 South Island missionary, collected forty years ago a great 

 variety of legends, and, although these mention seals, whales, 

 dogs, herons, owls, rats, &c, no word concerning the moa 

 appears in them. Mr. John White, in his " Ancient History 

 of the Maori" (vol. i., p. 181), relates the tradition of the 

 South Island priests, that the moa was destroyed in the days 

 of the Deluge. The Eev. Mr. Colenso was informed, half a 

 century ago, that the last moa was to be found on the top of 

 a certain bill, guarded by two great lizards. 



These accounts seem to remove the moa into the land of 

 pure myth, and into the antique times wherein myth has its 

 natural abode. I cannot accept the evidence given by Judge 

 Mailing, by John White in his earlier writings,'" by the Eev. 

 E. Taylor, or by Colonel McDonnell, as to the stories told by 

 natives concerning the habits, &c, of moas, when compared 

 with the evidence given to Mr. Colenso and to Mr. Stack as 

 to the traditional extinction of the moa in the days of the 

 Deluge. I must not omit to mention that Sir Walter Buller, 

 being in London when my first paper was read, supplied a 

 note to the paper in the Transactions of the Anthropological 

 Society, in which he stated that he had heard a legend related 

 that a certain chief a long time ago had been lamed by the 

 kick of a pet moa. However, Major Mair, in conversation 

 with me, declared that the chief who was thus lamed was a 

 demi-god, not a man, and that he had split open the earth 



* Mr. Colenso disposes (vol. xii., p. 104, of Transactions) of Mr. 

 White's assertion that a moa had been killed in modern times near Wai- 

 pukurau by stating that he (Mr. Colenso) had been living at Waipukurau 

 for forty years, and had not heard of the circumstance ; also, that he had 

 there conversed with Maoris who had known Captain Cook, but knew 

 nothing of the moa. Mr. Colenso adds that he knew Mr. White when the 

 latter came, a boy, to New Zealand. 



