674 Transactions . — Miscellaneous. 



without such there would not be so many different kinds of 

 dogs and fowls as we have with us now. 



We do not find many kinds of wild dogs in Australia, all 

 being levelled up to nearly the one standard of size and 

 colour, because they were practically without interference. 

 On the other hand, there were as many different sizes of kan- 

 garoos as there were of moas, but directly under the influence 

 of men and dogs as enemies, from which the moas must have 

 been exempt for ages. 



The necessities of defence and concealment in the kan- 

 garoo's case gave the various sizes great advantages in their 

 own localities. The wallaby in the scrub, and the " old 

 man" on the plain, had better chances there to escape and 

 multiply, for the eagle-hawk would have seen the wallaby in 

 the open, and the man or dog would have had a better chance 

 to stalk or rush the " old man" in the bush. So that there 

 was something to force their divergence and then keep them 

 apart ; while the moas either had men for masters or farmers 

 or had their world to themselves, without an enemy that they 

 cared for. They had an eagle, of course, but it probably had 

 plenty to do attending to the flightless swans or geese, for it 

 was hardly heavy enough to prey even upon moa chickens. 



There were identical species of moas in both Islands, 

 which is wonderful when we remember their aptitude for 

 variation, and to my thinking almost proof that the old 

 natives farmed them as we farm sheep, and transported 

 them with the other ground birds from one Island to the 

 other. Stores of food and fencing would have been required 

 according to our ideas of keeping ponies and draughts from 

 intermingling, but these are small matters arising wholly 

 from our habit of thinking that all the old people were fools — 

 an error that will account for many of our difficulties in under- 

 standing such things. If it is a fact that the Maoris came 

 and went from New Zealand six hundred years ago through 

 the trackless sea, they must have known more about naviga- 

 tion than Englishmen at that time, who were then afraid to 

 go out of sight of land ; while the Maoris may have been 

 weeks at sea, steering their course by some subtle art and 

 science that some of us at least cannot now understand. 

 Then, why need we trouble our heads about the fencing and 

 food required for a moa farm? The Lyfctelton steamer the 

 other day lost her way in going to the Chatham Islands, and 

 had some trouble to find her destination. 



I have read recently that the words for counting from one 

 to ten in the Madagascan language and in Maori are nearly 

 identical, and if that is a fact the dialect is likely to have 

 come almost direct to New Zealand, or at least without any 

 long delays among other island tongues. And, if it was not 



