THE MO A AT HOME. 27 7 



for centuries, and the periodical deposits would only have in- 

 creased at the same rate as the frost and snow. This process 

 continuing, until not even in the most favoured places would their 

 eggs hatch, and the last of their race were, therefore, doomed to 

 annihilation, a period would arrive which must have been with 

 the poor birds a time of indescribable suffering. Thus afflicted 

 with pain, famishing with hunger (as whatever their food was it 

 lay deep under the snow-mantle of the earth), and, finding cruel 

 nature arrayed against them, pinching their bodies with piercing 

 winds, from which they had no shelter, and cutting their feet with 

 ice and frost, were it only as an alleviation of pain when dying, I 

 can see nothing more natural than for them to have plunged into 

 this spring. The water, being of the same temperature as the 

 earth, would feel quite warm to them, and, there being no induce- 

 ment for them to get out, as their food was cut off, they would 

 settle in deeper and deeper, and remain till numbness and hunger 

 put an end to their suffering. 



Hence I account for the bones being soundest on the top, as 

 they would have been deposited so much later. Hence also I 

 account for there being no bones of young birds on top, as it was 

 long after incubation ceased that the old family was gathered to 

 its resting-place. Hence I account for the absence of egg-shells, 

 as these deposits only took place in the winter season, which was 

 never the breeding season with the birds. And by the trampling 

 round of the birds in the spring I account for the equal distribu- 

 tion generally of the gravel amongst the bones, the trampling 

 being the disturbing cause from which alone some bunches of 

 gravel from the gizzards escaped by being covered with a breast- 

 bone or pelvis. 



Mr. Booth further adds :— " If it is asked, why are there no 

 bones in the surrounding lagoons ? my answer is, that as they are 

 all (as far as I have examined) surface-lagoons, they would have 

 been frozen over when the cold drove the birds into the spring- 

 water, which never froze." 



This theory of Mr. Booth's has much to recommend it, and 

 we agree with him that the theory of cold seems more plausible 

 to account for the heaps of bones at Lake Wakatipu, described 

 by Dr. Hector, than the theory of fire which the Doctor advances. 

 The Moas would certainly have been quite as likely to have 

 sought shelter under a precipitous ledge of rocks to protect them 



