4554 THE ZooLocist—Auveust, 1875. 
Researches and Excavations carried on in and near the Moa-bone 
Point Cave, Sumner Road, in the Year 1872. Read at a 
Special Meeting of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 
New Zealand, on the 15th of September, 1874. By JuLius 
Haast, Ph.D., F.R.S., President. 
Contents of the Cave (continued from §, S, 4526).—In the dirt 
and ash bed above the agglomerate we obtained a number of bones 
belonging both to our extinct and living vertebrate fauna, amongst 
them the greater portion of the skeleton of a fur seal. In the shell 
beds above numerous Maori remains were found—amongst them 
a few fern-root beaters made of wood, some canoe pins, and flax- 
plaitings. 
When examining first the two main trial trenches crossing each 
other at right angles in the centre of the cave, the absence of the 
agglomeratic beds was here noted by me, but I then thought that it 
might have been caused by the roof having, in that part of the cave, 
accidentally possessed a greater solidity. In this surmise I was 
still more confirmed by finding that in those spots the dirt and ash 
bed was much thicker, lying here directly upon the sands, so that 
the former had a nearly uniform upper surface. However, when con- 
tinuing the excavations across the cross ditch towards the entrance 
of the cave, we found in the longitudinal trench a third pile, and 
observed that in the space between these three points and another 
point (where, however, no remains of a pile were existing) forming 
an oblong square thirty-six feet long by twelve feet wide, the 
agglomerate bed was entirely missing, and the inference was there- 
fore natural that at one time a human dwelling of some kind had 
been standing here. My first impression was that the cave dwellers, 
in order to protect themselves from the pieces of rock becoming 
loose at intervals from the ceiling, had built a strong roof, resting 
upon four corner piles, which, after the principal fall of rocks 
ceased, had accidentally been burned to the ground; but on closer 
examination it became clear to me that the time during which the 
agglomeratic beds were formed was of such long duration that it 
is impossible to assume such a frail construction having lasted so 
long. Moreover, one can scarcely believe that a primitive race, and 
which evidently only at intervals inhabited the cave, before the 
agglomerate bed was deposited upon the marine sands, should act 
