White. — On the Bird Moa and its Aliases. 265 



or understood a garbled account of these bones — namely, that 

 they were those of a giant eagle called " movie " (Trans. 

 N.Z. Inst., vol. xxvi., p. 253). Dr. Dieffenbach says (vol. ii., 

 p. 195), " To this order (Struthionidae) probably belongs a 

 bird, now extinct, called ' moa ' (or ' movie ') by the natives. 

 The evidences are a bone, very little fossilized, which was 

 brought from New Zealand by Mr. Eule to Mr. Gray, and by 

 him sent to Professor Eichard Owen (Proc. Zool. Soc, 1839, 

 p. 169). I possess drawings of similar bones, and of what may 

 possibly be a claw, which are in the collection of the Eev. 

 Eichard Taylor, in Waimate. They are found on the east 

 coast of the northern island of New Zealand, and are brought 

 down by rivulets from a neighbouring mountain called Hiko- 

 rangi." :;c Such would seem to be the information collected or 

 known in England about this bird in 1839. And we may ask 

 on what authority Mr. Eule called the bird " movie " a gigantic 

 eagle. Possibly he might conclude it must have been a bird 

 of prey owing to the Maoris speaking of it as such a fierce and 

 dangerous creature. The Mr. Gray mentioned was the then 

 chief of the Zoological Department of the British Museum. 

 Mr. Gray appended the notes on the fauna of New Zealand to 

 Dieffenbach's " New Zealand." May not the South Island 

 account of poiia-hai, the giant bird of prey, have been mis- 

 understood on similar lines *? I am unable to say if in Maori 

 poua, an old person, is pronounced so as to allow of a com- 

 parison between that word and poua-kai. If such can be 

 done we get iioua-kai, old people's food, a bird on which the 

 former Maori made his feasts, a bird which was eaten by the 

 people, and not the bird which ate the ancestral Maori. This 

 rendering of the name alters the whole character of the bird. 

 Whether the bird poua of the Chatham-Islanders is an allusion 

 to the moa as an old person or to the extinct swan is an open 

 question. It is not spoken of as a bird of prey, but as utilized 

 by man for food. In Maori we find youa-kaki-tca, a chief 

 place of residence, possibly meaning " the old people's sleeping- 

 place," and jioua-hao-Jcai, a supernatural being who helped to 

 kill Taw 7 haki, an ogre, who was killed by hot stones being 

 thrown down his throat. This word would seem to mean 

 " the old person who ate greedily," and the reference to hot 

 stones may be merely an allusion to the known habit of the 

 moa of swallowing stones to assist digestion. It must be 

 borne in mind that verbal tradition would contain certain 

 truths distorted in proportion to the lapse of time in which it 

 had been in circulation. 



Among the Maori traditions are many which mention the 



* " Movie " is here added to Dieffenbach's account by Mr. Gray, 

 following Mr. Rule (?). 



