4650 THE ZooLtoctst—OcToBER, 1875. 
a few of their smaller tools made of bone, a few personal ornaments, 
as well as fragments of canoes, whares, and of wooden spears, fire- 
sticks, and other objects too numerous to mention, but by which 
the fact is established that they had reached already a certain state 
of civilisation, which in many respects seems not to have been 
inferior to that possessed by the Maoris when New Zealand was first 
visited by Europeans. At the same time, if we consider the posi- 
tion of the kitchen middens on the dunes in the vicinity of the cave, 
and those which I discovered on the lines of inner dunes in the 
neighbourhood of Christchurch, even the most ardent defender of 
the groundless assertions that the moas only became extinct some 
eighty or one hundred years ago must admit that, at least in this 
portion of the island, these gigantic birds were exterminated at a 
period when the physical features in this part of the Canterbury 
plains near the sea were different from what they are now, that 
large lagoon-like lakes have since been filled up, and sand dunes of 
considerable width have been added to those then existing. In one 
word, those changes during quarternary times have been of such 
magnitude that it is impossible to estimate, even approximately, 
the length of time necessary for the achievement of such important 
alterations, worked out by the action of the sea and the rivers 
entering it. And as in other portions of this island the deposits in 
which the kitchen middens of the moa-hunters occur are of similar 
antiquity, | have no doubt that my views, expressed on this subject 
some years ago, will gain general acceptance in due time, although 
I know that erroneous notions to the contrary, when they have once 
become popular prejudices, are difficult to eradicate—especially 
when they are supported by one or two scientific men in New 
Zealand, notwithstanding that their assertions never stood the 
test of critical examination, and have been refuted over and over 
again. 
That after the deposition of the dirt-bed the cave remained un- 
inhabited for a considerable space of time, is not only proved by 
the clear line of demarcation between that layer and the shell-bed 
above it, in which no moa bones were found, but also by the deposit 
of blown sands about a foot thick at the entrance, and gradually 
thinning out as it advances towards the interior of the cave. More- 
over, if we consider that at least these lower shell beds in the cave 
are of contemporaneous origin with those which are situated outside 
on the dunes, to which Maori tradition assigns such a high antiquity, 
