132 PETRIFACTIONS AND THEIR TEACHINGS. CHAP. II. 



Man, the race gradually diminished, and the colossal types 

 were finally annihilated by human agency. 



That some of the gigantic species of Dinornis were con- 

 temporary with the Maoris, there can now be no reasonable 

 doubt. Apart from native traditions, and songs and tales 

 in which allusions are made to the magnitude and flowing 

 plumage of the Moa, the collocation of calcined and roasted 

 bones of these birds, with those of dogs, and of the human 

 species, in the ancient fire-heaps of the Aborigines, and the 

 unequivocal marks of the celt or axe of jade on some of the 

 leg-bones, the incisions having evidently been made on the 

 bones when recent, afford incontrovertible proof that the 

 last of the Moas, like the last of the Dodos, was extirpated 

 by man. 



From the great size and strength of the thighs, legs, and 

 feet of the Moa, it is clear that the hinder limbs were powerful 

 locomotive organs; and when we consider the vast swarms 

 of the largest species which at one period must have existed, 

 it seems highly probable that this family of colossal birds, 

 a family unknown either in a recent or fossil state in any 

 other part of the world, was not originally confined within 

 the narrow geographical limits of modern New Zealand, but 

 ranged over an extensive continent now submerged, and of 

 which Philip and Norfolk Islands, and Chatham and Auck- 

 land Islands, and those of New Zealand, are the culminating 

 points. 



But whatever may be the result of future discoveries as 

 to the relative age of the bone-deposits, or the existence or 

 total extinction of any of the colossal species of Moas, or the 

 former geographical distribution of the race over countries 

 now submerged, one most remarkable fact must remain un- 

 assailable, namely, the vast preponderance of the class Aves, 

 or Birds, which prevailed, and still prevails in the fauna 

 of New Zealand, to the almost entire exclusion of mam- 

 malia and reptiles. Any palaeontologist who saw the collec- 

 tions formed by my son alone, must have been astonished 

 at their extent and variety. I may venture to affirm that 

 such an assemblage of the fossil bones of birds was never 

 before seen in Europe; upwards of fifteen hundred speci- 

 mens, collected from various parts of the country, with 

 scarcely any intermixture of the relics of any other class; 



