Eggs and Skeletons of Moas 83 



found at the bottom of refuse heaps, in caves, and even in river deposits, that 

 contain portions of the skin and ligaments, and with fairly well preserved feath- 

 ers still attached. It has been suggested that possibly the Moa was domesti- 

 cated or herded by the natives, but there is hardly more evidence to support this 

 than the notion that a few examples may still be living in the remote, unexplored 

 interior. 



One of the best preserved specimens retaining the skin and feathers was 

 found in a cave at the foot of the Obelisk Hills, Otago. It is a portion about 

 seventeen inches in length from near the base of the neck, which at this point 

 appears to have been about eighteen inches in circumference. The skin, which 

 is about three sixteenths of an inch thick, is of a dirty red-brown color, and is 

 formed into deep transverse folds. The surface is roughened by elevated conical 

 papillae, from the apex of some of which springs a slender transparent feather 

 barrel, about half an inch long. On the dorsal surface some of the quills still 

 carry fragments of the webs, a few of which are two inches in length. In color 

 these barbs are chestnut-red, much as in certain species of Apteryx. Frag- 

 ments of egg-shells as already mentioned are of common occurrence about the 

 ancient cooking places, and now and then a more or less perfect shell is unearthed. 

 Of these one of the most perfect came to light in 1901, having been washed from 

 a bank some fourteen feet below the surface on the river Molyneux, Otago. This 

 egg, which is described as of the usual pale buff color and is absolutely unbroken, 

 measures seven and three quarters inches in the long diameter, and five and one 

 quarter inches in the short diameter. Another nearly perfect example from the 

 same locality was slightly larger, and a fortunate specimen found some years 

 ago near Tiger Hill, in the interior of Otago, contained the well-developed bones 

 of an embryo chick that must have been about fourteen and one half inches long, 

 and well showed the massiveness of the posterior limbs. The egg-shell when 

 not abraded is usually of a pale yellow color, smooth, and irregularly pitted on 

 the outside with dots and linear markings. Its structure has been studied under 

 the microscope and found to agree most closely with the eggs of struthious birds, 

 and more especially with those of the Rhea or South American Ostrich. 



Although previously observed by missionaries among the Maoris, the first 

 Moa bone brought to scientific attention was in 1839, when Sir Richard Owen 

 exhibited a portion of a femur before the Zoological Society of London. Since 

 that date many thousands of bones have been collected and studied with the 

 result of determining the existence of between twenty and thirty species, with a 

 range in size from that of a very large Turkey, to Dinornis maximus, which pos- 

 sessed a tibia thirty-nine inches long and probably stood nearly ten feet high. 

 Certain of the species appear to have been rare, while others, especially the 

 smaller forms, were exceedingly abundant. In draining a swamp at Glenmark, 

 near Canterbury, the soil was found to be literally full of Moa-bones, disposed in 

 all sorts of positions, and more recently another small pond in the same region 

 was drained, and in a space of twenty by thirty feet over 2500 bones were recov- 

 ered, representing, it is thought, not less than 800 birds. In another locality where 

 a ledge of rocks jets into a lake, thus forming a cul-de-sac, no less than thirty-nine 



