164 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



those wonderful birds. To these places, therefore, excursions 

 were next undertaken, in great hope and expectation of 

 success. 



" One of the most striking features of Wharekauri " (the 

 larger of the Chatham Islands) " is the number of tarns and 

 lakes it possesses. The most extensive of these, named 

 Te Whanga, occupies the greater part of the low central 

 region of the island, and on its eastern side is separated from 

 the sea only by a very narrow bar of sand, which every few 

 years, when the lagoon becomes surcharged by the rivers 

 which feed it, is carried away, and the water rushes out till 

 the lagoon attains a certain level, when the sea again silts up 

 the opening. The western side of this lake is bounded by 

 cliffs of limestone of Palaeozoic age, on which lies a bed, in 

 some places 50ft. to 60ft. deep, of friable polyzoa, containing 

 sharks' teeth and echinoderm spines of species belonging to 

 the transition period between the Secondary and Tertiary 

 epochs (the Cretaceo-tertiary of the New Zealand Geological 

 Survey Eeports) . A long the margin of this lagoon, and at a 

 short distance from the shore" {i.e., of the lagoon, not the 

 sea), " so the traditions run, the Morioris dug deep holes, into 

 which the poiiwa were driven, and, when inextricably bogged, 

 they were clubbed to death, and then dragged ashore to the 

 cooking-pits. At every one of the indicated places we suc- 

 ceeded in finding old ovens, the sites of camps, or the 

 remains of feasts, which were, as usual, birds, molluscs, and 

 fishes. 



" At one spot at least we found grim proofs that the 

 feasters did not always confine themselves to the afore- 

 mentioned diet, for I gathered several human limb-bones and 

 a couple of grinning crania, with in each an ominously sugges- 

 tive hole in that region of the skull wdiere an additional eye 

 would have proved of such inestimable advantage to a race 

 so cruel and treacherous to each other as our own. To my 

 great disappointment, our extended excavations rewarded me 

 with no bone or fragment of a bone of the poiiwa or of the 

 Apteryx. Yet from circumstantiality of the account of the 

 poiiwa in their traditions, and of the narrative I listened to 

 a little later from Tapu, one of the oldest surviving chief 

 men of the Morioris (whom I found living in a poor house- 

 cluster at the south-east corner of the island), I cannot resist 

 the conviction that the poiiwa, which, if it was anything, 

 must have been a species of moa, did actually live on these 

 islands. 



" Tapu was an intelligent old fellow, with a very Jewish 

 countenance and highly-developed frontal processes. ' The 

 poiiwa,' he said, ' he a big bird ; he die — Oo ! — two hundred, 

 three hundred year' " — (this estimate of time is an acquired 



