White. — On Extinct Birds of the Chatham Islands. 165 



European phrase) — " ' long time ago. I see his bone stick up 

 in Te Whanga, where the Morioris camp long time back. 

 Me young fellow ; father of me tell me Moriori make him hole 

 in water, drive him poiiwa in, hammer him dead, and roast 

 him. His bone I see him stick in hole in mud in lagoon 

 water. Oo ! big, all same as cow ; he eat plenty grass, swim'" 

 (floating on) " ' lagoon water ; Moriori call " koko." ' * It is, of 

 course, impossible to describe in words Tapu's gestures and 

 expressions, but no one who heard him could doubt that he 

 had seen large bones in the lagoon, and that their origin had 

 been explained to him by his father. 



" In the kitchenmidden that produced the human remains 

 tliere were thousands of sioan-hones of the same species as that I 

 had gathered by the side of the oven on the Waitangi Beach. 

 This lake tvas therefore, probably, their chief home, whither 

 they must have resorted in enormous members, for in some 

 localities they appear to have been almost the sole food of the 

 pxiople. That the swan, now indigenous only to Western 

 Australia, South America, and the north of the Northern 

 Hemisphere, had in past times been also a native of New 

 Zealand was unknown till the previous year, when it was 

 discovered during my excavations of a cave near Christ- 

 church. . . . The Maori fisher-folk who occupied the 

 cave fed on the swan and on the moa, and cast their bones 

 side by side into the refuse-heap in front of their door, to 

 await the future. 



" Within recent years the Australian black-swan (Chenopis 

 atrata) has been introduced into New Zealand, and has already 

 multiplied with extraordinary rapidity. . . . The cause of 

 the total extinction, therefore, of the ancient swan (and other 

 birds also) in its natural home appears at present inexplicable." 



May not the poua have had weak pinions similar to the 

 flightless duck of the Auckland Islands and the steamer-duck 

 of the Patagonian coast ? 



We will now note the account of certain extinct or unknown 

 birds of the Chathams, mentioned by Mr. Shand in his account 

 of " The Moriori People of the Chatham Islands," published 

 in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. iii., p. 80 : — 



" The mehonui, a species of the New Zealand kakapo 

 (Stringops habroptilus) larger than a goose, and the mehoriki, 

 a bird about the size of a small hen. Both are extinct; they 

 were wingless birds. The mehonui " (i.e., large meho) " was 

 usually captured on its sleeping-place or nest, where six or 



* Mr. Forbes must have here given a wrong name for this water- 

 weed ; "koko" is tlie name given to the bird tui, the parson-bird (Pros- 

 themadera novcczealandicc), by the Moriori, and also used by the Maori 

 in the south of New Zealand. 



