506 Proceedings. 



rageous," " polygamous," &c. ; and, as many of these compound words 

 were also used by Maoris, it is probable that they had no reference what- 

 ever to the Dinornis ; certainly the Tongan, Tahitian, Samoan, &c., 

 words did not apply to the Dinornis. Nor did the scanty allusions in 

 New Zealand song and proverb ever mention any attribute (such as huge 

 size, &c.) of the bird — it might have been any bird. He believed that 

 the pictures and descriptions of the bird sent (as reconstructed by Pro- 

 fessor Owen) to every Maori tribe had been fitted to old traditions of a 

 lost bird. Certainly it was monstrous that, when every effort had been 

 made to get reliable evidence thirty years ago, a story should now be 

 brought forward asserting that Kawaua Paipai (who only died four years 

 ago) and his tribe hunted the moa in droves at Kangatapu. He (Mr. 

 Tregear) had interviewed that day a number of old Maoris — one a cente- 

 narian — who had known Kawaua Paipai all their lives, and who had 

 lived in Taranaki Province ; and they laughed to scorn the idea of moas 

 being " battued " on the Waimate Plains and they not having heard of 

 such an occurrence. It was much easier to tell an untruth than to hunt 

 moas in modern days. 



Sir James Hector was astonished at this fruitless discussion being 

 revived. Mr. Tregear had not gone back far enough in our " Transac- 

 tions," or he would have found Mr. Colenso's reports of earlier date 

 than 1878 referred to. In 1840 Mr. Colenso relates that he himself had 

 gone out with a party of natives expecting to capture a live moa. He 

 would also have found the reference to Polack's account of the large 

 struthious bird called the "moa," gathered from native tradition long 

 before any bones had been described. The manner in which the moa- 

 bones were found associated with remains of human occupation through- 

 out New Zealand afforded clear evidence that these huge birds had been 

 eaten and exterminated by a race that could not be distinguished by any 

 habits of life from the Maoris of a few years ago. The determination of 

 the epoch of the first appearance and the date of the final disappearance 

 of the moa was more a question for a geologist than a philologist. The 

 paucity of reference to the moa and its true nature in the early col- 

 lected vocabularies was due to the circumstance that those who ques- 

 tioned the Maoris had no conception of the existence of such an extra- 

 ordinary bird, while to the Maoris it was such common information that 

 they never thought of mentioning it. Bishop Hadfield had explained 

 this to him. But there were many allusions and traditions that referred to 

 the moa. Certainly it was more rational to hold that the word " moa," as 

 used by the Maoris, referred to the large birds tiiat were so abundant 

 than to a domestic fowl, of the existence of which in New Zealand until 

 of late years there was not a scrap of evidence. He would remind the 

 Society that in 1876, in this room, he had exhibited a feather with an 

 after-plume, exactly agreeing with the feathers found on the moa's neck 

 at Clyde, in Otago, and which feather he had taken off an ancient taiaha 

 in the British Museum collection. As to direct evidence, he could only 

 say that the great chief Rewi told him that his grandfather had killed 

 moas. 



Mr. Higginson said that he had seen in the York Museum the 

 moa's neck and skin referred to, and its state of preservation did not give 

 the impression that it was of very ancient date. The last recorded oc- 

 currence of the dodo in ]\Iauritius was in 1G80, and yet few or none 

 of its bones were found until he himself collected some in 1865 ; and 

 until this latter date the existence of the dodo was almost doubted. 



Mr. McKay said that Mr. Tregear had in effect said that the Maoris 

 had no knowledge whatever of the moa. It must, however, be admitted 

 that, in as far as the tools and implements of the moa-hunters could 

 be put in evidence, they proved distinctly that the moa-hunter was 

 identical with the IMaovi. The excavations in I\loa-bone Cave, Sumner, 

 showed this clearly. The antiquity of any particular deposit might or 



