234 Transactions. — Zoology. 



by those acquainted with the subject to be a fresh one from a 

 moa." This is charming and conclusive. Another find of 

 moa-feathers was made by a Dr. Nelson, at the Waipara, 

 in 1858, as recorded in the Otago Witness (12th January). 

 They were beautifully preserved fossils ; but, alas ! a fossil 

 fern had in this instance been taken for the object desired. 



From traditions and mistakes we must turn, then, to 

 actual relics. Thirty years ago the celebrated York speci- 

 men was found at Tiger Hill, and the shafts of the feathers 

 still remained on parts of the skin attached to the pelvic 

 region. These were described by W. S. Dallas in 1865 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc, p. 262). Nothing, however, remained of 

 the fluffy part of the feather. 



The first paper describing any well-preserved feathers was 

 read by Captain Hutton before the Wellington Philosophical 

 Society in 1871,* and a figure was given which represents an 

 average moa-feather very fairly. These feathers were found, 

 together with moa-bones, buried in the sand, about 50ft. from 

 the surface, at the junction of the Manuherikia and Molyneux 

 Rivers. 



About the same time (12th January, 1869), Dr. Thomson, 

 of Clyde, sent to the Colonial Museum twenty feathers found 

 18ft. below the surface, between Alexandra and Roxburgh. 

 Some of these are in the Museum. The remains found in 

 the Earnscleugh cave, on the Obelisk Range, included the fine 

 neck now in the Otago University Museum, and this retained 

 a number of the shafts of feathers. 



The Museum i has also specimens of moa - feathers 

 collected by Mr. Taylor White from a cave near Mount 

 Nicholas and at Queenstown. Specimens from both of these 

 caves are in the Otago University Museum. 



Mr. White had a considerable number of well-preserved 

 feathers in his possession until recently, and some of these 

 are now in the Museum of the Hawke's Bay Institute at 

 Napier, and the remainder in England ; and in a second 

 paper, in vol. xviii. of the Trans. N.Z. Inst., p. 83, he 

 mentions that one feather — a large one — was pure white. 



Professor Owen, in his work on "The Extinct Birds of 

 New Zealand" (vol. i., p. 442), figures a feather, in a woodcut, 

 which is utterly unlike anything that could ever come from 

 a moa. Probably the original sketch was merely a diagram 

 roughly drawn to show the distribution of the colouring on the 

 feather. 



Mr. Hill some years ago found a splendid impression of a 

 feather in a deposit of very fine pumice-mud, containing leaves, 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. iv., p. 172, pi. ix. 

 t Vide Trans. N.Z. Inst , vol. viii., p. 101. 



