Drew. — Natural History Notes. 285 



metatarsal bones of the extinct goose, Cnemiornis. I do not 

 know at what depth the bones were found, but the holes and 

 grooves in all were filled with Tertiary marine shells and 

 sand. It may also be interesting to say that in 1894 the Eev. 

 A. O. Williams procured for us from Te Aute Swamp, Hawke's 

 Bay, a quantity of moa-bones, amongst which I obtained a 

 number of bones of Cnemiornis and also of Cygnus sumnerensis. 



Moa remains. 



The remains of a large moa have been brought to light 

 from the old estuary gravel-pits of St. John's Hill, on the 

 town side of the Wanganui Eiver, and directly opposite the 

 blue-clay bluff called Shakspeare Cliff. In May last the 

 borough workmen reached a depth of 65ft. from the surface, 

 finding the bones, which consist of a tibia, femur, and several 

 of the vertebrae. They were very soft and brittle, and conse- 

 quently much broken in the digging-out. The workmen state 

 that there were a number of other bones, but far too soft to do 

 anything with. It is interesting to note the occurrence of 

 moa-bones in this district at this great depth, as hitherto such 

 finds here have only been in the lighter surface-deposits. 



Botaurus pceciloptilus. 



To-day my son was dissecting a common bittern (Botaurus 

 paciloptilus) and called my attention to the undigested food 

 it had eaten. We found the "bill of fare" for that day to 

 have been a silver-eye {Zosterops ccerulcscens) , frog (acclima- 

 tised from Australia), five locusts, a large spider, two common 

 sand-liguras, remains of a small fish, &c. My experience of 

 the bittern is that it will only feed on living animals, not 

 eating anything dead. If so, it must have caught the silver- 

 eye alive. No doubt the busy little silver-eye, intent upon its 

 hunting, would gradually approach the motionless bittern,. 

 and thus fall an easy prey. It is well known that the bittern 

 varies its feeding, but this is the first instance in my know- 

 ledge of a bird being found in its stomach, adding still another 

 enemy to our useful little migrant blight-bird. From a bittern 

 last summer we extracted seven mice, and from aiiother a 

 half-grown rat, besides other delicacies. In spite of this bird 

 being so useful to the farmer it is ruthlessly shot, and, like the 

 rest, will soon be a bird of the past. Twenty years ago it was^ 

 very common in the swampy ground of this coast, but its 

 slow, easy flight makes it a capital target for the cockney 

 sportsman, who could not hit anything that rose faster. 

 There are so many so-called sportsmen who will shoot at any- 

 thing that flies that it is a question whether tlie introduction 

 of foreign game has not had something to do with the extinc- 

 tion of some of our native birds. 



