THE MOA AT HOME. 281 



of the New Zealand Geological Survey, among the number. 

 Mr. Walter Mantell (son of the eminent geologist) was the first 

 explorer of the artificial Moa beds, soon after the settlement of 

 the colony, and advanced the idea that Moas existed to very 

 recent times. And Mr. Mantell seems very certain that Maoris 

 in the South at the date of his early explorations, in 1846, were 

 well acquainted with the former existence of the Moas and the 

 circumstances which led to their extinction. He also thinks that 

 cannibalism prevailed, but in the North Island only, at the time 

 the Moa was used for food. 



Several bones of the Moa, with the dried ligaments still 

 attached, have been found, together with portions of the 

 skin and a few feathers, although Dr. Haast claims that 

 the conditions were exceptionally favourable for their long 

 preservation ; others contend that they cannot be very many 

 years old. 



Capt. Hutton thought that the weight of evidence goes to 

 show that the remains from the Earnsclugh Cave " are not very 

 old, and that probably they do not date further back than the 

 commencement of the present century," but, in speaking of the 

 bones with dried skin from the Knobby Ranges, found more 

 recently (1874) in a crevice among the rocks, he says : — " The 

 extraordinary juxtaposition of decayed and lichen-covered bones 

 with well-preserved skin and flesh seems to me to point to some 

 peculiarity in the atmosphere which enabled flesh to resist decay 

 when shaded from the rays of the sun, and by no means to prove 

 that the bird to which this neck and flesh belonged lived at a 

 later date than those whose bones we now find buried under the 

 soil." 



D. W. Murrison thinks that if what Dr. Haast and Mr. 

 Colenso say is true for the North Island, it certainly cannot be 

 made to apply to the South Island, and says : — " I think, from the 

 evidence we are in possession of, there is every reason to suppose 

 that the Dinornis has existed within the last hundred years." 

 And thus the discussion is kept up as to the time when the Moa 

 became extinct. 



As a sample of the traditions which Mr. Colenso explains 

 away, we quote from Mr. J. W. Hamilton (Trans. N. Z. Institute, 

 1874): — "In 1844, at Wellington, I was present, as Governor 

 Fitzroy's private secretary, at a conversation held with a very old 



