38 Man tell on Fossil Remains from Neio Zealand. 



the edges of most of them are rounded, as if water-worn. They 

 belong to different species, or perhaps genera: some of them are 

 smooth, bat others have the external surface marked with short 

 interrupted linear grooves, resembling the eggs of some of the 

 Struthionidae, but still presenting very characteristic peculiarities. 



No vestiges of the bones of the wings have been detected. 



Seals. — The remaining part of the collection consists of jaws 

 with teeth, scapulas, vertebras, ribs, femora, and other bones, of a 

 species of large seal ; whether distinct from the two kinds (Phoca 

 leptonyx and P. leonina) that inhabit the southern seas, and oc- 

 casionally visit the shores of New Zealand, I have not yet been 

 able to determine. The bones were found mixed indiscriminately 

 with those of the birds, and are filled with volcanic sand. 



Femur of a Carnivore. — One other relic must be specified, the 

 femur of a dog ; the sole fossil bone of a terrestrial quadruped 

 that has hitherto been discovered in the ossiferous deposits of 

 New Zealand. 



Burnt Moa, and Human bones. — I must not omit to mention 

 a very remarkable incident. In one spot the natives pointed out 

 to my son some little mounds covered with herbage, as contain- 

 ing bones, the refuse of feasts made by their ancestors ; and upon 

 digging into these hillocks they were found to be made up of 

 burnt bones. These consisted of Moas\ dogs' and human bones 

 promiscuously intermingled. These bones, which have evidently 

 been subjected to the action of fire, contain no traces whatever 

 either of the earthy powder or ferruginous impregnation so con- 

 stant in the fossil bones from the fluviatile silt, nor of the volcanic 

 sand with which all the bones collected by my son are more or 

 less permeated. Mr. Taylor {ante p. 32) mentions having found 

 similar heaps of bones in the valley of the Whaingaihu, "as 

 though the flesh of the birds had been eaten, and the bones thrown 

 indiscriminately together." If such was the origin of these heaps 

 of bones, and they are to be regarded as the rejectamenta of the 

 feasts of the aborigines, the practice of cannibalism by the New 

 Zeaianders will appear to have been of very ancient date, and not 

 to have originated from the want of animal food on account of 

 the extinction of the Moas, as Professor Owen so ingeniously and 

 indulgently suggested in extenuation of this horrid practice by so 

 intelligent a race as the New Zeaianders. 



III. General Conclusions. — From the scattered facts which I 

 have thus brought together in order to throw some light on a 

 question of such deep palaeontological interest — upon the princi- 

 ple that the feeblest rays, when concentrated into a focus, will 

 produce some degree of illumination — I think we may safely in- 

 fer that the islands of New Zealand were densely peopled at a 

 period geologically recent, by tribes of gigantic ostrich-like birds, 

 of species and genera which have long since been obliterated 







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