■ Field. — Date of the Extinction of the Moa. 563 



settlers first arrived there, and their rapid disappearance 

 afterwards. I have heard the same thing from my cousin, 

 Mr. Strickland Field, who went to Canterbm^y in 1851. He 

 mentions one instance in particular, in 1852 or 1853, when he 

 and his brother found, apparently, the whole of the bones of a 

 medium-sized bird, where it had seemingly lain down and 

 died, beside a large flax-bush, at St. Albans, near Christchurch. 

 I happen to have always grown a few bushes of the very best 

 kind of Phormium tenax (that called by the Maoris of this part 

 tihore whararihi) for the last forty years, and, as the result 

 of my experience, I can say that the life of a flax-bush does 

 not exceed from twenty to twenty-five years. Long before 

 that time it becomes hollow in the centre, and divides into 

 several smaller bushes, preparatory to dying out altogether. 

 All my original bushes have been dead for many years, and I 

 renew them by planting fresh fans from time to time. The 

 position, therefore, in which these bones were found bears out 

 the opinion formed by my cousins at the time, that from their 

 freshness and soundness the bird could not have been many 

 years dead. My cousins collected the bones and carried them 

 to Christchurch in a sack, which they placed among some 

 shrubs in their father's garden. Six or eight years later, 

 when moa-bones were being sought for as curiosities, they 

 looked for the sack and its contents, and found that the whole 

 had completely rotted away. 



I have taken notice of late, and made inquiry from others, 

 as to the time it takes bones of animals to decay and dis- 

 appear, and I find that it varies greatly according to soil and 

 situation. I am assured that, on the top of a high dry ridge, 

 where there is but little soil, bones will last for twenty or 

 thirty years, while on the flats near my own residence there 

 is no trace of such bones even after five or six years. I find 

 that large bones, like those of a horse or a cow, somewhat 

 shade the ground, promoting the growth of grass, and causing 

 worms and beetles to establish themselves beneath them. 

 From these two causes, and particularly from the burying- 

 operations of the latter, the bones soon sink into the surface 

 and decay, nourishing the grass and being absorbed by it in 

 the process. From the cellular structure of moa-bones, it 

 seems to me that they would decay far faster than those of 

 an ox or horse, so that those seen in Otago and Canterbury in 

 the early days of those settlements must have belonged to 

 birds that had not been very long dead. 



In October last I mentioned that I had received informa- 

 tion from Major Lockett, an ex-officer of the Imperial Forces, 

 which indicated that the moa still existed, in the Nelson 

 Province, certainly up to 1857 or 1858. On my return to 

 Wanganui I got the Major to give me the following memoran- 



