44 



For himsflf, he (the Prcsiclont) mic^ht sa}' that having beon one of the 

 early settlers of New Zealand, he had opportunities of knowing ttie tradi- 

 tions of the New Zealanders, which were not available to scientific men who 

 came to New Zealand at a later period, and who, generally inhabitants of 

 towns, were less thrown amongst the natives. Now in the first place ha 

 could remark that the " stone age " of the New Zealander had not passed 

 when the early settlers arrived ; chey were still making stone implements, 

 and though in the northern island the tradition regarding the moa had 

 assumed in some cases a wild and legendary form (of which he gave 

 examples) yet when he first visited the Southern island the natives 

 ■warned him when he explored the Kaikora inland country to be careful 

 in attacking the moa, a huge bird that he would certainly meet, for if he 

 approached it from behind it would " kick like a horse " and possibly 

 break his leg, thus showing their acquaintance with the habits of a bird 

 closely allied to the ostrich and emu family. In the Wairau also the 

 natives had a quill said to be of the moa, and in the Wellington museum, a 

 portion of the skin of the neck of one of these birds with feathers 

 adhering is at present preserved, he himself had exhumed the skeleton of 

 a moa lying on the clayey side of a hill, and only partially covered by a 

 Blight slip of a few inches of vegetable mould from a hillock above. The 

 gristly rings of the windpipe of this bird were in a perfect state of 

 perservation. It is yet more remarkable that when early in January. 

 1851 he travelled on foot from Port Cooper, the present site of the Canter- 

 bury settlement to Warau, being the first European who had traversed that 

 district, at Kaikora, under the mountains named by Cook, the " Lookers 

 on," an old chief "Kaikora" " of that Ilk," told him that On the tops 

 of those mountains an enormous bird of prey rufous in colour, built its 

 nest, and that in their forefather's time it sometimes descended suddenly 

 and was large enough to carry off a good sized boy or girl. Was not 

 this a tradition of the Harpagon Moorei P This bird had not been seen 

 for some generations, but though it was doubtful whether their fathers 

 had seen the moa their grandfathers I have been assured certainly had, 

 and natives doubted net but that it still existed in wild localities. 



Mr. M. Allpokt had listened with the greatest pleasure not only to 

 the admirable paper just read, but ulso to the highly interesting intro- 

 ductory remarks by its learned author, to whom he proposed a special vote 

 of thanks should be accorded. (Applause.) 



The Bishop of Tasmania, in rising to second the vote of thanks to the 

 reader of the paper, wished to make a few observations upon the 

 argument previously advanced upon the stone or so called flint implement 

 before them. That implement was, as he was assured, the work of an 

 Australian savage, and if so, a presumption was raised that the inferences 

 drawn bj' Sir C. Lyell, and others, upon the antiquity of man have been 

 rash. It is quite possible that hasty conclusions have been drawn, and 

 that calculations will have to be corrected by some thousands or perhaps 

 hundreds of thousand of years. But the main argument is not disturbed 

 by that flint implement before them. Put by the side of another such 

 weapon upon which Sir C. Lyall and others have reasoned, it plainly 

 tells U8 that those savages who lived some untold periods ago, and those 

 who till lately inhabited this island, are of the same human race, and with 

 common instincts have fallen back in the same stage of civilisation, upon 

 the same rude weapons suggested to them by the same flint material lying 

 before their eyes. The flint was altogether in a scientific point of view 

 different from another found associated with organic remains of animals 

 that existed in an exceedingly remote period of time. Besides, there are 

 other parallel lines of evidence, resting upon ethnological science, and 

 the science of language, which supported the inference drawn by Sir C. 

 Lyell. The flint implement before them, and the facts related by His 



