174 M. de Quatrefages on Moas and Moa-hunters. 



these great Brevipennes for themselves. But besides these 

 miicli more powerful means were employed against them. 

 Nooses, in which they caught themselves, were placed in 

 their runs* ; immense battues, in which the whole population 

 was associated, were organized ; the birds were driven towards 

 a lake, into which they threw themselves in despair, and 

 where hunters in canoes killed them without difficulty f. 

 Lastly, they went so far as to invest them with fire by burn- 

 ing vast tracts of forest, when they must have perished by 

 hundreds, often without any profit to the incendiaries. In 

 this way may be explained the fact noted by Mr. Taylor and 

 various other reporters, who speak of whole fields covered 

 with hillocks formed by the bones of Moas J. It may be 

 added that the Maoris were very fond of their eggs. Frag- 

 ments of the shells of these have been found almost every- 

 where and sometimes in immense numbers. 



Thus pursued to extremity and attacked even in their 

 reproduction, the Moas evidently could not but disappear ; 

 but tlieir extinction is certainly recent. In maintaining the 

 opposite opinion and supposing that the total destruction of 

 these large birds dates back to an epoch as ancient as our 

 European neolithic times. Dr. Haast has deceived himself. 

 He has been led astray by purely geological analogies, per- 

 haps more apparent than real. 



At any rate, we cannot establish any true assimilation be- 

 tween the zoological facts which have occurred in Europe and 

 in New Zealand. The Quaternary fauna of New Zealand 

 was entirely of local origin ; it was otherwise here. The 

 mammoth and the rhinoceros were immigrant animals, 

 driven by the cold of the northern regions of Asia towards 

 warmer countries §. The extinction of these species must 

 have been hastened by the action of a medium quite different 

 from that in which they had originated, and by the profound 

 changes of climate which they had to support towards the 

 close of the glacial epoch. Nothing of the kind took place 

 in New Zealand. The Moas were there truly autochthonous ; 

 they never quitted their original centre of creation ; in their 

 conditions of existence they underwent only inconsiderable 

 modifications, as, indeed, is very well shown by Dr. Haast 

 himself II . 



* Taylor, quoted by Travers (' Transactions ' &c. vol. viii. p. 77). 



t Roberts, loc. cit. \ Taylor, loc. cit. 



§ Murchisou, de Verneuil, Keyserling, and d'Arcliiac regard the 

 mammoth and the tichorhine rhinoceros as having lived in Siberia 

 during the Tertiary epoch. According to Lartet the reindeer was tlieir 

 companion. 



II Address, he. cit., and ' Geology,' pa.ssmi. 



