THE MO A AT HOME. 275 



" From the observations we were thus able to make tbe con- 

 clusion has been forced upon us that these gigantic birds must 

 have been able to sustain life over a long period, because the 

 same species which occur in the lower lacustrine and fiuviatile 

 deposits are again found in the bogs and swamps, in the fissures 

 of rocks, and in the kitchen middens of the Moa-hunting race, 

 which latter evidently marks the end of the Dinornis age." 



Dr. Hector mentions heaps of bones, with stone implements, 

 on the top of Corrio Mountains (South Island), 5000 feet above 

 sea-level. 



Mr. B. S. Booth (' Transactions of New Zealand Institute,' 

 1874) gives a very interesting description of a Moa-swamp at 

 Hamilton. He says : — " The surface lagoon, before being dis- 

 turbed, was rather higher than the surrounding surface, and 

 consisted of from one to two feet of black peat mixed with a 

 blackish silt, which rested on and was mixed with the bones to 

 the very bottom." Below the bones there was one foot of a fine 

 whitish, very soft, and somewhat elastic clay. " The bones were 

 deposited principally in the north-east part of the lagoon, in a 

 space exactly the shape of a half-moon, forty feet from point to 

 point, and eighteen feet across the centre, and varying from two 

 to four feet deep." 



He estimates that nearly seven tons of bones were taken out 

 of this space, most of which were badly decomposed, and that 

 the number of individual birds could not have been less than 

 400. The bones " lay in every imaginable complication of tangle," 

 with "no bone on top." 



" A great quantity of quartz gravel and smooth pebbles 

 occurred among the bones, and in the shallowest parts of the 

 deposit, under pelves or breast-bones which had not been dis- 

 turbed, they lay in bunches." " There was no gravel in the 

 lagoon except amongst the bones, and no small gutter or water- 

 course could be found by which it might have come in." 



The only explanation apparently which can be given for the 

 presence of the pebbles is that they were brought there in the 

 gizzards of the birds. This theory is supported by numerous 

 instances where similar pebbles have been found connected with 

 Moa bones in such a way as to admit of no other explanation 

 than that they were connected with the birds. The bones on the 

 top were in a much better state of preservation than those at the 



