Moas and Moa-hunters. 163 



have further ascertained that tlie beds with and without bones 

 were often differently superimposed*. 



The increasing rarity of the Moas at a given point, the 

 movements of the popuhxtion which must often have been the 

 consequence of it, the accidental association of the two kinds 

 of food in the same repast, and the necessity of having 

 recourse to a diet previously disdained, explain in the simplest 

 manner the difference in the results furnished by excavations 

 made at very adjacent points by equally competent observers. 

 But we see that in tiieir totality these results are irreconcilable 

 with the interpretations of Dr. Haast. 



V. 



Among the propositions that Dr. Haast has sustained, those 

 relating to the history of the dog must detain us for a time. 

 We have seen that, in his third memoir, he admits the exis- 

 tence of a wild dog contemporaneously with the Moas, and 

 absolutely denies that the Moa-hunters had domestic dogsf. 

 Upon this latter point the New-Zealand naturalist is far from 

 being in accord with himself. In his first researches he had 

 found only a few bones of the dog among the remains of 

 feasts, and he explained this scarcity by saying that this 

 animal was only exceptionally eaten when its owner was 

 short of provisions J. Here, then, he accepted the notion that 

 the domestication of the dog was practised by the Moa-hunters. 

 It is true, he added, that perhaps also it was killed in the chase, 

 which supposes that the animal lived in the wild state, and it 

 is to this latter opinion that he seems to have finally come. 



But if this hypothesis were true we should have found, 

 from time to time, the bones of the dog side by side with 

 those of the Moas, its contemporaries. Now we have already 

 stated that no fossil terrestrial mammal has yet been met with 

 in New Zealand §. To this statement the dog forms no ex- 



* "Moa-bones were never found unassociated with beds of shells, and 

 altbougli shell-beds did occur without Moa-bones, these just as often 

 underlaid beds with Moa-bones as overlaid them" (" Notes on the Maori 

 Cooking-places at the Mouth of the Shag River," by Capt. F. W. Hutton, 

 in ' Transactions ' &c. vol. viii. p. 105). 



t Fourth and fifth propositions. 



X " Either when its owner was short of provisions, or perhaps . , . . " 

 (Addiess, he. cit. p. 81)). 



§ In my first article on the Moas, when speaking of the small number 

 of Mammaha found in New Zealand and the absence of fossils of animals 

 of that class, I forgot to add the epithet terrestrial (cieriens). Headers 

 will, however, I fancy, have filled up this omission. Aquatic Ma)nmalia, 

 on the coutiary, have repeatedly been found in the strata of New Zealand 



