THE ZooLocist—NoveMBER, 1876. 5157 
Under some overhanging rocks in the neighbourhood of the Clutha River, 
at a place named by the first explorers ‘ Moa Flat,’ from the abundance of 
bones which lay strewn on the surface, rude stone-flakes of a kind of stone 
not occurring in that district were found by me in 1862, associated with 
moa-bones. Forty miles further in the interior, and at the same place where 
the moa’s neck was recently obtained, Captain Fraser, in 1864, discovered 
what he described to me as a manufactory for such flakes and knives of 
chert as could be used as rough cutting instruments, in a cave formed by 
overhanging rocks, sheltered only from the south-west storms, as if an 
accumulation by a storm-stayed party of natives. With these were also 
associated moa-bones and other remains. Again, at the top of the Carrick 
Mountains, which are in the same district, but to an altitude of 5000 feet 
above the sea, the same gentleman discovered a gully, in which were 
numerous heaps of bones, and along with them native implements of stone, 
amongst which was a well-finished cleaver of blue slate and also a coarsely- 
made hornstone cleaver, the latter of a material that must have been 
brought from a very great distance. 
“Still clearer evidence that, in very recent times, the natives travelled 
through the interior, probably following the moa as a means of subsistence, 
like natives in countries where large game abounds, was obtained in 1865-6 
by Messrs. J. and W. Murison. At the Maniototo Plains bones of several 
species of Dinornis, Aptornis, Apteryx, large rails, Stringops, and other birds 
are exceedingly abundant in the allwviwm of a particular stream, so much 
so that they are turned up by the plough with facility. Attention was 
arrested by the occurrence, on the high-ground terrace which bounds the 
valley of this stream, of circular heaps composed of flakes and chips of 
chert, of a description that occurs only in large blocks along the base of the 
mountains at a mile distant. This chert is a very peculiar rock, being a 
‘cemented water quartz,’ or sandy gravel converted into quartzite, by in- 
filtration of silicious matter. The resemblance of the flakes to those they 
had seen described as found in the ancient kitchen-middens, and a desire to 
account for the great profusion of moa-bones on a lower terrace shelf nearer 
the margin of the stream, led Messrs. Murison to explore the ground care- 
fully, and, by excavating in likely spots, they found a series of circular pits 
partly lined with stones, and containing, intermixed with charcoal, abundance 
of moa-bones and"egg-shells, together with bones of the dog, the egg-shells 
being in such quantities that they consider that hundreds of eggs must have 
been cooked in each hole. Along with these were stone implements of 
various kinds, and of several other varieties of rock besides the chert which 
lies on the surface. The form and contents of these cooking-ovens correspond 
exactly with those described by Mantell, in 1847, as occurring on the sea- 
coast; and among the stone implements which Mantell found in them, he 
remembers some to have been of the same chert which occurs in situ at this 
SECOND SERIES—VOL. XI. 31 
