282 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Maori, who asserted that he had seen Captain Cook. This 

 Maori, so far as my memory now serves me, I should guess was 

 seventy years old ; at all events, he was brought forward as the 

 oldest of his people then residing about Port Nicholson. Being 

 asked had he ever seen a Moa, he replied, ' Yes, he had seen the 

 last one that had been heard of,' and, on being questioned, 

 described it as a very large bird with a neck like that of a horse." 

 Mr. H. further says: — "In 1844, and for many years later, it 

 was believed by our people for a certainty that the Moa was still 

 to be found alive in the South Island, of which very little was 

 then known," and that stories were currently reported of one or 

 two old settlers in the South about Otago and Foveaux Straits 

 who had actually eaten Moa-flesh. 



For details of the osteology of these birds we must refer to 

 Prof. Richard Owen's descriptions, published in the ' Transac- 

 tions of the Zoological Society of London,' begun in November, 

 1839. Prof. Owen at first made two genera, Dinornis and Pala- 

 pteryx, but afterwards discarded the latter genus and referred all 

 the different species to the genus Dinornis. 



In 1875, Dr. Haast, Director of the Canterbury Museum, 

 proposed two families, with two genera in each family, thus : — 

 Family Dinomitliidce, (a) genus Dinornis, (b) genus Meinornis ; 

 and family Palapterygida, (a) genus Palaptcryx, (b) genus 

 Euryapteryx. 



Under these four genera, as proposed by Dr. Haast, there 

 have been about twenty species described. These species are 

 founded mainly on the size and proportion of the bones, par- 

 ticularly the bones of the leg ; and it is not improbable that as 

 more careful comparisons are made of larger series of bones, the 

 number of species will be reduced. It is an interesting fact that 

 Cook's Straits, which separates the two islands, " seems to have 

 been an effectual bar to any migration from one island to the 

 other," as the same species are not found on both islands. Prof. 

 Owen infers from the beak of the Dinornis, " formed after the 

 model of the adze or pickaxe," and " the robust proportions of 

 the cervical vertebras, especially of their spinous processes," that 

 it had " a more laborious task than the mere plucking of seeds, 

 fruit, or herbage," and that " the beak was associated with the 

 feet in the labour of dislodging the farinaceous roots of the ferns 

 that grow in characteristic abundance in New Zealand." 



