THE ZOOLOGIST. 



THIRD SERIES. 



Vol. VII.] JULY, 188 3. [No. 79. 



THE MOA AT HOME.* 



Eveeyone who has written anything about New Zealand for 

 the past thirty or forty years, whether about its inhabitants, its 

 archaeology, its natural history, or its geology, has had much to tell 

 us about the great wingless birds that once inhabited that group 

 of islands. From this great mass of material we have endea- 

 voured to sift out the leading and most important facts, and 

 present them to our readers in a brief summary. 



The Eev. Eichard Taylor, F.G.S., thinks he was the first 

 discoverer of the Moa, the name given to all these great fossil 

 birds. While journeying to Poverty Bay, in the early part of 

 1839, he found the bone of a Moa near the East Cape, which the 

 natives told him was the bone of a large bird which they called 

 Tarepo, and which lived on the top of Hikurangi, the highest 

 mountain on the east coast. He found later that the natives of 

 the west coast called the bones Moa, and were entirely ignorant of 

 the name Tarepo. 



It seems probable, however, that to the Eev. W. Colenso, 

 F.G.S., belongs the honour of first discovery of the Moa, as he 

 was the first also to investigate the nature of the fossil remains 

 and determine the struthious affinities of the birds to which the 

 bones belonged. In 1842 he wrote: — "During the summer of 

 1838 I accompanied the Eev. W. Williams on a visit to the tribes 

 inhabiting the East Cape district. While at Waiapu I heard 

 from the natives of a certain monstrous animal, while some said 



* From Ward's ' Natural Science Bulletin ' (Kochester, New York), 1883. 



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