508 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



My task is done. I did not intend to write another line on 

 this subject of the Moa age, but in this same volume (xxv.), 

 in the Proceedings of the Wellington Philosophical Society, 

 are many observations made at diiferent meetings of the 

 Society by the members present on this theme. Some of them 

 I am really sorry to find recorded there, because they are 

 merely the old, old stories and tales which have long ago been 

 answered, and shown to be untenable, and refuted, and there- 

 fore such should not be again resurrected. Indeed, in so 

 doing, the truth — the "true facts"- — will never be arrived 

 at ; and that true and proper remark of Max Miiller (in 

 his late lectures at Glasgow, as brought forward by me 

 in a paper in this same volume, p. 496) is very appli- 

 cable here : " "What is of immense importance in all 

 scientific discussions is the spirit of truth. To make 

 light of a fact that has been established, to ignore in- 

 tentionally an argument which we cannot refute, to throw 

 out guesses w'hich we know we cannot prove — nay, w^iich we 

 do not even attempt to prove — is simply wrong, and poisons 

 the air in which true science can breathe and live " 

 (" Gifford Lectures," 1891, p. 81). And as I have read of 

 those remarks having been made before (both in the back 

 volumes of Transactions as well as in the Wellington papers 

 of the day), I would, as a member of the Society, beg to be 

 permitted to call the attention of some of our prominent 

 speakers at those meetings to what they have said on this 

 subject. 



Mr. Travers, for instance, says, "We could not judge of 

 this matter from the Maoris of the present day, but fifty years 

 ago they ivere familiar with the existence of this bird" (I.e., 

 p. 531). Now, it seems very hard that such a statement (oft 

 repeated too) should pass imnoticed. It was in January, 

 1838, that I myself first moved in this matter (as I have fully 

 and clearly shown in my long paper in vol. xii.. Transactions), 

 and I left no stone unturned to glean something tangible 

 about it — in travelling throughout much of the North Island, 

 from Poverty Bay to Cape Maria Van Diemen (a zigzag 

 course to all Maori villages as ordered), during which I now 

 and then fell in with chiefs who had seen Cook and also been 

 on board of his ship, which would take back to another fifty 

 years ; by friends and acquaintances among Europeans settled 

 and trtiding in various parts ; by rewards ; by young Maori 

 chiefs returning to their homes and tribes from our head 

 mission-station in the Bay of Islands ; by letters to our Maori 

 Christian teachers and catechists — and the result was Nil. 

 And there were others succeeding me, fifty years ago, who 

 also travelled much throughout this North Island (Dr. Dief- 

 fenbach, for instance), and their united report is exactly 



