Moas and Moa-hunters. 135 



[Promceus]. These stones were not always of the same nature, 

 and varied with the localities*. 



III. 



The details that I have just given assume not only that 

 man and the Moas were contemporaneous, but also that the 

 disappearance of the latter is of recent date. Such, in fact, is 

 the conclusion to which we are led by the results of a regular 

 inquiry pursued in New Zealand for nearly forty years by a 

 great number of investigators and distinguished naturalists. 

 Nevertheless, until the last few years it was quite permissible 

 to liarbour doubts on the subject. One of the most autho- 

 ritative of New-Zealand geologists, Dr. Julius Haast, has 

 pronounced most absolutely in a very different sense. While 

 accepting as demonstrated the coexistence of man and the 

 Moas at a very distant epoch answering to our prehistoric 

 times, he denies that the Maoris themselves ever knew these 

 great birds f. 



On the other hand, Mr. W. Mantell, to whom his nume- 

 rous researches justly give an authority upon this point, has 

 distinctly and repeatedly expressed the opposite opinion, and 

 believes that these large Brevipenues were hunted and exter- 

 minated at a comparatively recent epoch by these very 

 Maoris J. 



Lastly, Mr. Stack, who is accepted by his confreres as a 

 very competent judge, has adopted an intermediate opinion. 

 He regards the belief iu the recent destruction of the Moas as 

 inadmissible, but does not wish to throw it back into a very 

 distant past§. 



p. 85). A certain uumber of these Moa-stones have been collected and 

 appear in the museum at Auckland, and no doubt in other collections in 

 New Zealand. 



* Haast, loc. cit. p. 73. 



t " Moas and Moa-hunters : Address to the Philosophical Institute of 

 Canterbury, 1871," by Julius Haast (' Transactions,' &c. vol. viii. p. 66 

 1872). Dr. Haast has maintained his original opinion in other memoirs' 

 and in the work that he has published under the title of ' Geoloo-y of 

 the Provinces of Canterbury and Westland, New Zealand,' 187U. 



X " Oil the fossil Remains of Birds collected in various Parts of New 

 Zealand by Mr. Walter Mantell of Wellington," by Gideon Algernon 

 Mantell, LL.D., F.Pi-.S. (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. iv. p. 22o^ 1848)- 

 "Address on the Moas:" Extracts by W. B. Mantell (' Transactions ' &c! 

 vol. i. p. 18, 1869). However, in this latter paper Mr. Mantell seems 

 disposed to throAv further back the epoch of the destruction of the Moas 

 in consequence of the obscurities iu the traditions which he has been 

 able to collect upon the subject. Mr. White's letter already cited, and 

 to which I shall reAert, fuU^- answers this objection. 



§ " Some Observations on the Annual Address of the President " bv 

 the Rev. J. W. Stack (' Transactions ' &c. vol. iv. p. 107). ' 



