Hill.— The Moa — Legendary, Historical, and Geological. 349 



told the moa was in the Te Wai-iti Mountains, whilst White, in his 

 " Ancient History of the Maori," says the last moa was killed at Wai- 

 pukurau ! All these tales suffice to show the uselessness of describing the 

 moa as having disappeared during the last century. The middens suffice 

 to the contrary. The swamp areas show a long period of slow growth that 

 must be counted by centuries, and the caves wherein so many complete 

 skeletons of moas have been found suggest that they were sealed by pumice 

 or other volcanic material centuries ago. 



From these remarks it will be noticed that the East Coast district pro- 

 vides no evidence in support of those who contend that the moa has only 

 recently disappeared from the country, and this by the hands of Maori 

 hunters. In vol. 24, page 169, of the Transactions the late Professor 

 Hutton concludes his able paper "On the Moas of New Zealand " thus : 

 " In the North Island we have at Wanganui and near Whangarei undoubted 



o o 



proofs that the ancestors of the present Maoris killed and ate moas . . . 

 and we must conclude that the moa was exterminated not long after their 

 arrival in New Zealand." In vol. 15 there is a paper on " Moa and Moa- 

 hunters," by A. de Quatrefages, translated from the French by Laura 

 Buller, and it concludes as follows : " It is therefore clear that, far from 

 being too bold, I had underestimated the time of the disappearance of the 

 moa in carrying it back so far as the end of the last century." 



On the other hand, the late Sir Julius von Haast (vol. 4, p. 91) gave it 

 as his opinion that " the moa owed its destruction to a different race and 

 period to the Maori race in New Zealand " ; whilst the Revs. William 

 Colenso, F.R.S., and James Stack, Major Mair, Colonel Porter, and many 

 others affirm that the moa was a traditional something — bird, or man, or 

 atua — -in the early days, when the bones found on the banks and in the 

 beds of rivers began to be sought after by the early missionaries and settlers. 

 The geological facts brought forward by me dealing solely with the East 

 Coast throws back still further the time when the moa disappeared. 



The history of the moa is the history of a race of birds that disappeared 

 long anterior to the coming of the Maoris to New Zoaland. It belongs to 

 the later Pleistocene period rather than the Recent — to the period of intense 

 volcanic activity, the period of great earth-movements and earfch-breaks, 

 when birds that flew congregated wibh birds that ran, birds herbivorous 

 with birds carnivorous, in their efforts to escape from the destructive effects 

 of dust and ashes and poisonous vapours that were spread broadcast over 

 the laud, and from the great floods that followed in their wake. The birds, 

 in their efforts to escape, made for the uplands, some seeking shelter in 

 caves, some amidst the fallen and broken rock, and some reaching the open 

 lands and the topmost hills. All died suddenly ; nor was there an enemy 

 left, man or beast, that could use the flesh or bones of the thousands of dead 

 birds that were destroyed. Those that sought shelter in the caves died like 

 those in the open, and each entrance to them was sealed by the falling pumice 

 or loose debris near by. Those on the hills were washed down into the 

 newly formed earth-breaks with pumice and dust to testify as to their 

 mode of destruction and their mode of preservation. The history of the 

 moa is the history of a long past. It reaches back to the legendary history 

 of the Maori race, to the time when the South Island was peopled by giants 

 who could stride from mountain -range to mountain-range, could swallow 

 up rivers, and transform themselves into animate or inanimate nature, as 

 told in White's "History of the Maori," vol. 3, p. 191. The history of 

 settlement in the North Island has the same legendary basis, and the moa 



