M. de Quatrefages oh Moas and Moa-hunters. 159 



pidse) or to the Shrews (Soricidai), and no zoologist has ever 

 suggested the union of these families. The supposed close 

 relationship depends therefoz'e on faulty estimation of the 

 natural affinities of these animals. 



Two species of bats, Vesperugo noctivagans and Atalajyha 

 cinerea^ inhabit the Bermudas, while one only, Vesperugo 

 Leislerij is known in the Azores, and its presence there is less 

 remarkable, seeing that the latter islands are distant about 

 550 miles from Madeira, where this species is also found, 

 while the former are nearly 700 miles from the American 

 coast. The presence of these animals in both groups of 

 islands has been attributed to violent storms ; and it is worthy 

 of notice, as tending to bear out the correctness of this theory, 

 that the Azorean species resembles the American species 

 inhabiting the Bermudas in the robustness of its bodily 

 structure and in the hairiness of its wing and interfemoral 

 membranes — qualities which would endow the animals pos- 

 sessing them with greater powers of resisting fatigue and 

 of enduring the chilling effects of high winds at probably a 

 great elevation. 



XXI. — Moas and Moa-hunters. By A. DE QuATREFAGES. 



[Concluded from page 141.] 



IV. 



At the same time that he clearly distinguished the Moa- 

 hunters from the Maoris^ Dr. Haast asserted tliat the former 

 confined themselves to roughly chipping their stone imple- 

 ments, while the latter knew how to give them a polish, of 

 which we can judge from numerous specimens*. He added 

 that the Moa-hunters did not possess weapons in nephrite, 

 that is to say, fabricated out of a kind of stone often con- 

 founded with jade, to which the islanders found in New Zea- 

 land by European navigators attached a special valuef. 



These two propositions were of very great importance in 

 connexion with the theory maintained by the New-Zealand 

 naturalist. They tended to establish a further agreement with 

 what took place in Europe. It is well known that the chip>ped 

 hache and the polished hache are among the characteristic 

 traits which, among us, distinguish two epochs. It is also 

 well known that the populations of these two epochs belonged 



* Sixth proportion, p. 140. t Second proposition, p. UO. 



