5156 THE ZooLoGisTt— NOVEMBER, 1876. 
fact that “the name of the moa is mixed up with their songs and 
stories.” 
On the other hand, Dr. Hector, Mr. Murison, Mr. Mantell, 
Sir George Grey, Dr. Buller, the Rev. Mr. Taylor, and many others 
who have enjoyed far greater opportunities of obtaining information 
on the subject than those who are quoted so approvingly by Dr. 
Haast, strongly dissent from the views propounded in his papers, 
and have adduced a large mass of facts relevant to the proof that 
the extinction of the moa is a matter of comparatively recent date. 
In a paper by Dr. Hector, read before the Otago Institute in 
September, 1871 (Trans. N. Z. Inst., vol. iv., p. 110), in which he’ 
described the bones of an embryo moa chick, found with the egg 
which had contained them; the cervical vertebre of a moa of 
large size, upon the posterior aspect of which the skin, partly 
covered with feathers, was still attached by the shrivelled muscles 
and ligaments; and a remarkably perfect skeleton, in which 
portions of the ligaments, skin and feathers were still attached to 
some of the bones—all of which were discovered in the Province 
of Otago—the Doctor says :— 
“The above interesting discoveries render it probable that the inland 
district of Otago, at a time when its grassy plains and rolling hills were 
covered with a dense scrubby vegetation, or a light forest growth, was where 
the giant wingless birds of New Zealand lingered till latest times. It is 
impossible to convey an idea of the profusion of bones which, only a few 
years ago, were found in this district, scattered on the surface of the ground, 
or buried in the alluvial soil in the neighbourhood of streams and rivers. At 
the present time this area of country is particularly arid as compared with 
the prevalent character of New Zealand. It is perfectly treeless—nothing 
but the smallest sized shrubs being found within a distance of sixty or 
seventy miles. ‘The surface features comprise round-backed ranges of hills 
of schistoze rock with swamps on the top, deeply cut by ravines that open 
out on basin-shaped plains, formed of alluvial deposits that have been 
everywhere moulded into beautifully regular terraces to an altitude of 1700 
feet above sea-level. ‘That the mountain slopes were at one time covered 
with forest, the stumps and prostrate trunks of large trees, and the mounds 
and pits on the surface of the ground which mark old forest land, abundantly 
testify, although it is probable that the intervening plains have never sup- 
ported more than a dense thicket of shrubs, or were partly occupied by 
swamps. The greatest number of moa-bones were found where rivers de- 
bouch on the plains; and that at a comparatively late period these plains were 
the hunting-grounds of the aborigines can be proved almost incontestably. 
