Moas and Moa-hunters. 165 



of their flesh in a manner by no means agreeable, and they 

 would not fail to watch that they kept to their habitual diet"^. 

 It is therefore quite natural that the dogs of the Maoris did 

 not act in the same way as those which accompanied the old 

 Danes of the kitchen-middens, and that they have not, like 

 the latter, left the traces of their teeth upon the bones thrown 

 away about them. 



VI. 



There is another very important question with regard to 

 which Dr. Haast is not in agreement with several of his 

 colleagues. Tlie eminent geologist has declared many times 

 that he has never found iiuman bones among the fragments of 

 repasts scattered about near the ovens ; and from this negative 

 result he concludes that the Moa-hunters were not cannibalsf. 

 But he himself admits that he has not met with them any 

 more in the accumulations of shells incontestably left by the 

 existing MaorisJ. Now the cannibalism of the latter is well 

 known ; and nevertheless Dr. Haast's mode of reasonino- 

 would lead us to doubt or even to deny it. This simple re- 

 mark deprives Dr. Haast's argument of all value. 



However, in both cases, this absence of human remains is 

 easy to understand. It is not when engaged in the chase or 

 in fishing quietly for shell-fish that the most anthropophagous 

 tribe feeds upon human flesh. For the commission of an act 

 of cannibalism under such conditions as these, leaving on the 

 ground pell-mell bones of man and the Moas, nothing but 

 some absolutely exceptional circumstance would account. 



But, notwithstanding Dr. Haast, this fact has occurred 

 repeatedly. Mr. Walter Mantell first ascertained this in the 

 North Island§, and his testimony is one of those that we can the 

 least challenge. This able and persevering investigator disco- 

 vered in the valley of the Wanganui some hillocks, covered with 

 turf, which the natives declared to be formed by the remains 

 of the feasts of their ancestors. On excavating them he found 

 that they were composed of bones of Moas, dogs, and men 

 confusedly intermixed. All these bones had evidently under- 



* Tlie flesh of our European dogs, all of which eat more or less meat 

 has a peculiar taste, reminding one of the odour of an ill-kept kennel! 

 With this the siege of Paris made us only too well acquainted. 



f Seventh proposition. 



\ JjOC. cit. ' Transactions ' &c. vol. viii. p. 74. 



§ "These consisted of Moas', dogs', and human bones promiscuously 

 intermingled " (" On the Fossil Remains of Birds collected in various 

 parts of New Zealand by Mr. Walter Mantell,"' by G. A. Mantell, F.R.S. 

 in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. iv. 1848, p. 234). 



