140 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



of their fishing tackle, bones of its extinct rel- 

 atives, and these bones they declared to be as 

 large as those of an ox. 



About the same time another missionary, 

 the Rev. Richard Taylor, found a bone ascribed 

 to the Moa, and met with a very similar tradi- 

 tion among the natives of a near-by district, 

 only, as the foot of the rainbow moves away 

 as we move toward it, in his case the bird was 

 said to dwell in quite a different locality from 

 that given by the natives of East Cape. While, 

 however, the Maoris were certain that the 

 Moa still lived, and to doubt its existence was 

 little short of a crime, no one had actually seen 

 it, and as time went on and the bird still re- 

 mained unseen by any explorer, hope became 

 doubt and doubt certainty, until it even be- 

 came a mooted question whether such a bird 

 had existed within the past ten centuries, to 

 say nothing of having lived within the mem- 

 ory of man. 



But if we do not know the living birds, their 

 remains are scattered broadcast over hillside 

 and plain, concealed in caves, buried in the 

 mud of swamps, and from these we gain a good 



