Moas and Moa-hunters. 169 



were not the work of man ; they are well beaten and about 

 16 inches wide. They are so many runs such as wild 

 animals make, and, being in New Zealand, they are neces- 

 sarily the work of birds. From the height of the thicket 

 they could only have been made by animals much larger 

 than the kiwis [Apteryx)^ which alone traversed them at the 

 time of Dr. Hector's visit, the imported mammals not having 

 as yet penetrated so far *. Do not these tracks answer 

 perfectly to the idea that one is led to form of those in which 

 the Moa-hunters lay in ambush ? and their state of preserva- 

 tion would seem to attest that they cannot have been aban- 

 doned for centuries. 



VIIT. 



But the most decisive proof of the recent disappearance of 

 the Moas is furnished by the repeated discoveries of bones to 

 which the soft parts, the muscles and integuments, still adhere. 

 At least three t well-attested examples are known. The 

 colonial museum possesses a portion of a neck, the origin of 

 which I have not found mentioned anywherej. In 1871 

 Mr. Low announced to Dr. Hector that he had just' sent to 

 him a piece of Moa's flesh bearing down and many quills of 

 feathers §. Nearly at the same time Dr. Thomson obtained 

 from a gold-prospector, who had discovered them in a cave 

 and under an accumulation of mica-schist, the bones of a Moa 

 to which ligaments, muscles, and some fragments of skin still 

 adhered. The portion of neck above mentioned formed part 

 of this find, and was sent to Dr. Hector, who carefully figured 

 and described it ||. 



In these various specimens the soft tissues appear to have 

 undergone no alteration ; they are only much dried. The 

 flesh is not at all fossilized and its fibres can easily be de- 



* " On recent Moa-remains in New Zealand," by J. Hector (* Trans- 

 actions ' &c, vol. iv. p. 119). Dr. Hector's visit to tlie mountains iu 

 question took place in 1863. 



t [The York specimen of Dinornis robustus makes a fourth (see note, 

 p. 132), here again passed over in silence, although parts of the skin of 

 the feet were actually figured by Sir Richard Owen in the sixth volume 

 of the ' Transactions of the Zoological Society,' the remains of feathers 

 were described and figured by myself in the ' Proceedings ' of the same 

 Society for 1865, and a translation of the Abstract of the latter paper 

 appeared in the ' Anuales des Sciences Naturelles.' — Tb.] 



X Haast, third paper, loc. cit. p. 102. 



§ Note added to Dr. Hector's memoir, p. 114. 



II " On recent Moa-remains in New Zealand " (* Transactions ' &c. 

 vol. iv. p. Ill, pi. v.). 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. 8er. 5. Vol. xiv. 14 



