OTAGO INSTITUTE. 



Fiest Meeting: 10th May, 1892. 

 C. W. Adams, Esq., President, in the chair. 



1. Professor T. J. Parker, F.E.S., read a paper "On the 

 Presence of a Crest of Feathers in some Kinds of Moa." 

 This paper was illustrated by a number of skulls of different 

 species of moa, at least three species showing evidence of the 

 feather-pits. {Transactions, p. 3.) 



2. Professor Parker read a second paper, " On the Classi- 

 fication and Mutual Eelations of the Moas," as deduced from 

 the study of their skulls. (Transactions, p. 1.) A diagram 

 was exhibited showing the grouping of the species. 



A long and interesting discussion arose on these papers, Sir James 

 Hector (who happened to be in Dunedin) addressing himself particularly 

 to the distribution and possible causes of the extinction of the moa.* 



* The following shorthand report of Sir J. Hector's remarks appeared 

 in the Otago Witness : — 



Sir James Hector said, — This is a subject in which I have always 

 been deeply interested. For thirty years I have had more or less inti- 

 mate relations with everything that has to do with the geology of New 

 Zealand. One of the most important vistas in the geology of the country 

 is that which it presents at the time preceding the occupation of the 

 country by man. It is only by the study and marking-out of the natural 

 life-history, and in that the history of the moa, that we can ever arrive 

 at the features that New Zealand presented when man first arrived and 

 took part in the natural economy of the country as a disturbing element. 

 New Zealand must at that time have presented features of extraordinary 

 interest, and it is a common opinion that no higher animal existed when 

 man first appeared on the scene in New Zealand than moas, or, at any rate, 

 birds. Whether the moas were the highest birds, or whether there were 

 other birds higher, I am not going into that ; but that bird forms were the 

 highest forms of life before man was introduced is, from all that is 

 known, clearly beyond a doubt. But the peculiar circumstance is this : 

 that we had in New Zealand these wiugless birds developed in immense 

 profusion, and not only in profusion of form, but in profusion of numbers, 

 and that to a degree that is not to be found in any other part of the globe. 

 We have in other countries birds that have been deprived of the power 

 of flight, for it is the distinctive attribute of these birds that they have 

 been deprived of that power. But in other countries they have survived 

 only in single individual species. Over the whole of Africa we have but 

 one ostrich, over the whole of South America one rhea, and over the great 

 bulk of the New Guinea islands one cassowary; yet in New Zealand we 

 have crowded together, as if it were in the barnyard of a fowl-fancier, 



