Henby. — Old Huts at Dusky Sound. 677 



was no sense in any one charring old bones up there ; and a 

 grass fire cannot, at all events, char the underside of a bone, 

 for it will not always darken the bleaching on its top. 



Some one may ask why those fanciful navigators did not 

 take something more useful than the moa. Well, an animal's 

 value in that light greatly depends, first, on its disposition, 

 and then on its food and on its ability for doing mischief. If 

 the moa was as good-natured and as omnivorous as the weka 

 it would have been a great recommendation in the eyes of the 

 old voyager, with his limited space and opportunity for obtain- 

 ing food by the way. A weka will eat fish, flesh, or fowl, and 

 get rolling fat on berries, though its staple food is insects. 

 Our taine wekas catch and eat all the goldfinches that come to 

 our place, and they are the greatest egg thieves I ever met, and 

 will stay by a dead penguin or a big stranded fish while there 

 is a mite on its bones, apparently eating nothing else for days, 

 though they have a strong muscular gizzard with gravel in it 

 like that of a goose. 



The moas may have been far easier controlled and less 

 mischievous than pigs ; may have bred several times a year, 

 like the roa, when food was abundant ; may have grown 

 faster than our sheep, and produced better meat, though the 

 latter, of course, would greatly depend on the livers of those 

 old people, who may have been wise enough to choose what 

 would suit them best. They also took care to bring no beasts 

 of prey or noxious things, which would hardly have happened 

 if New Zealand was the remnant of a sunken continent. So 

 I think we might assume that it was the men that stocked 

 New Zealand, if they came here at all of their own accord ; 

 and it would be quite easy to believe this if we would only 

 admit that some people this side of Suez could have built and 

 steered a decked vessel about the same time as Noah. 



Art. LXX. — Old Huts at Dusky Sound. 



By E. Henry, Kesolution Island, 



Communicated by Sir James Hector. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 14th March, 1899.] 



Just a gossip about some old huts here which I only found a 

 few days ago. It may be well known that there was an old 

 pa here, but I never heard of it. 



The site of the villages was on the sunny side of Luncheon 



