Tur ZooLocist—Novemper, 1876, 5147 
of the peasantry are much startled at the snoring or hard breathing- 
like sound made by the young after dark, and will not believe it to 
be produced by birds, but attribute it rather to some supernatural 
cause. When first heard at a distance, the sound does seem 
rather strange and unaccountable. 
JOHN GAtTcompe. 
8, Lower Durnford Street, Stonehouse, Plymouth. 
Notes on the Extinction of the Moa, with a Review of the 
Discussion on the Subject, published in the « Transactions of 
the New Zealand Institute. By Wek hz: Travers, F.L.S.# 
You are doubtless aware that a considerable amount of dis- 
cussion has taken place, during the last few years, amongst scientific 
enquirers in New Zealand, as to whether the Dinornide became 
extinct before or since the occupation of the islands by the present 
native people, and as the question at issue is one of great interest, 
I have been induced, in Consequence of having lately received 
important information on the subject,—which | propose to give in 
the sequel,—to review this discussion. 
In the year 1871 Dr. Haast, who leads the discussion on the 
first side, read three elaborate papers on the subject before the 
Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, in the latter of which he 
sums up the conclusions to which he professed himself justified in 
arriving, as follows :— 
“1. The different species of Dinornis or moa began to appear and 
flourish in the post-pliocene period of New Zealand. 
“2. They have been extinct for such a long time that no reliable 
traditions as to their existence have been handed down to us. 
“3. A race of Autocthones, probably of Polynesian origin, was cotem- 
poraneous with the moa, by whom the huge wingless birds were hunted 
and exterminated. 
“4. A species of wild dog was cotemporaneous with them, which was 
also killed and eaten by the moa-hunters. 
“5. They did not possess a domesticated dog. 
“6. This branch of the Polynesian race possessed a very low standard of 
civilization, using only rudely chipped stone implements, whilst the Maoris, 
their direct descendants (by which Dr. Haast evidently meant ‘ successors ’) 
had, when the first Europeans arrived in New Zealand, already reached a 
* Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 6th September, 1875, 
