Fuly 6, 1871 | 
NATURE 
185 

hanging mass of mica schist, but the particulars of the 
locality have not yet been accurately ascertained, or 
whether any other parts of the bird are still to be found. 
Dr. Thomson has kindly undertaken to prosecute a further 
search, and to forward the specimen already obtained to 
the museum for examination. 
These interesting discoveries render it probable that the 
inland district of Otago, at a time when its grassy plains 
and rolling hills were covered with a dense scrubby 
vegetation or a light forest growth, was where the 
giant wingless birds of New Zealand lingered to 
latest times. It is impossible to convey an idea 
of the profusion of bones which, only a few years 
ago, were found in this district, scattered on the 
surface on the ground or buried in the alluvial soil in the 
neighbourhood of streams and rivers. At the present time 
this area of country is particularly arid as composed with 
the prevalent character of New Zealand. It is perfectly 
treeless ; nothing but the smallest-sized shrubs being 
found within a distance of sixty or seventy miles. The 
surface features comprise round-backed ranges of hills of 
schistose rock withswamps on the top, deeply cut by ravines 
that open out on basin-shaped plains formed of alluvial 
deposits that have been everywhere moulded into beauti- 
fully regular terraces to an altitude of 1,700 feet above 
the sea level. That the mountain-slopes were at one time 
covered with forest, the stumps and prostrate trunks of 
large pine trees, and the mounds and pits on the surface 
of the ground which mark old forest land, abundantly 
testify, although it is probable that the intervening plains 
have never supported more than a dense thicket of shrubs 
or were partly occupied by swamps. ‘The greatest num- 
ber of moa bones were found where rivers debouch on the 
plains, and that at a comparatively late period these plains 
were the hunting grounds of the Aborigines can be 
proved most incontestably. Under some overhanging 
rocks in the neighbourhood of the Clutha river, at a place 
named by the first explorers Moa Flat, from the abund- 
ance of bones which lay strewn on the surface, rude stone 
flakes of a kind of stone not occurring in that district were 
found associated with heaps of Moa bones. Forty miles 
further in the interior, and at the same place where the 
Moa’s neck was recently obtained, Captain Fraser dis- 
covered in 1864 what he described to me as a manufactory 
for such flakesand knives of chert as could be used as rough 
cutting instruments in a cave formed by overhanging 
rocks, sheltered only from S.W. storms, as if an accumu- 
lation by a storm-stayed party of natives. With these 
were also associated Moa bones and otherremains. Again, 
on the top of the Carrick Mountains, which are in the 
same district, but at an altitude of 5,000 feet above the 
sea, the same gentleman discovered a gully, in which were 
enormous heaps of bones, and along with them native im- 
plements of stone, among which was a well-finished cleaver 
of blue slate, and also a coarsely-made horn-stone cleaver, 
the latter of a material that must have been brought from 
a very great distance. 
Still clearer evidence that in very recent times the 
Natives travelled through the interior, probably following 
the Moas as a means of subsistence, like natives in other 
countries where large game abounds, was obtained in 
1865-6 by Messrs. J. and W. Murison. At the Maniototo 
Plains, bones of several species of Dinornis, Aptornis, 
Apteryx, large Rails, Stringops, and other birds, are ex- 
ceedingly abundant in the alluvium of a particular stream, 
so much ‘so that they are turned up by the plough with 
facility. Attention was arrested by the occurrence on the 
high-ground terrace which bounds the valley of this 
stream, of circular heaps composed of flakes and chips of 
chert, of a description that occurs only in large blocks 
along the base of the mountains at about a mile distant. 
This chert is a very peculiar rock, being a “cement” or 
“water quartz,” or sand and gravel converted into a hard 
quartzite by infiltration of silicious matter, The resem- 

blance of the flakes to those they had seen described as 
found in the ancient Kitchen-Middens, and a desire to 
account for the great profusion of Moa bones on a lower 
terrace-shelf nearer the margin of the stream, led the 
Messrs. Murison to explore the ground carefully, and by 
excavating in likely spots, they found a series of circular 
pits partly lined with stones, and containing, intermixed 
with charcoal, abundance of Moa bones and egg-shells, 
together with bones of the dog, the egg-shells being in 
such quantities that they consider that hundreds of eggs 
must have been cooked in each hole. Along with these 
were stone implements of various kinds, and of several 
other varieties of rock besides the chert which lies on the 
surface, The form and contents of these cooking-ovens 
correspond exactly with those described by Mantell in 
1847 as occurring on the sea-coast, and among the stone 
implements which Mantell found in them, he remembers 
some to have been of the same chert, which occurs 77 s¢¢z 
at this locality fifty miles in the interior. The greater part 
of these chert specimens found on the coast are with the 
rest of the collection in the British Museum. There are 
other circumstances which incidentally support the view 
that while the Moas still existed in great numbers, the 
country was open and regularly traversed by the natives 
engaged in hunting. Near the old Maori ovens on the 
coast Mantel! discovered a very curious dish made of 
steatite, a mineral occurring in New Zealand only on the 
west coast, rudely carved on the back in Maori fashion, 
measuring twelve by eight inches, and very shallow. 
The natives at the time recognised this dish by tradition, 
and said there should be two of them. It is very re- 
markable that since then the fellow dish has been 
discovered by some gold diggers in the Manuherikia 
Plain, and was in use on a hotel counter at the Dunstan 
township as a match-box, till lately, when it was sent to 
England, and, as I am informed, placed in a public 
museum in Liverpool. 
The manner in which the Maoris use their cooking 
ovens suggests to me an explanation of the mode in 
which these flakes of chert came to be found in such 
profusion, while only a few of them show any signs of 
having been trimmed in order to fit them for implements. 
The native method of cooking is to heat the hardest 
stones they can find in the fire, and then placing the food 
to be cooked on top, to cover the whole with leaves and 
earth, and through an opening pour in water, which 
coming in contact with the hot stones, causes the forma- 
tion of steam by which the food is cooked. If masses of 
the white chert be heated and quenched with water in the 
manner described, the result is the formation of flakes of 
every variety of shape with sharp cutting edges. It is 
natural to suppose that when one of these flakes was 
found of shape convenient for a particular purpose, such 
as a knife, cleaver, or spear-head, it was trimmed and 
dressed in the manner of a gun-flint, when the edge 
became defective, rather than thrown away, and favourite 
forms might be preserved and carried even as far as the 
coast. This suggested explanation of how a race advanced 
probably far beyond the period of such rude-looking 
implements might yet find it convenient to manufacture 
and use these, is supported by the circumstances that 
along with the trimmed chert flakes the Messrs. Murison 
found finished adzes of aphanite and even jade, which 
shows that the hunting natives had the same implements 
as those which are so common among the natives at the 
present day, though their use is now superseded by iron. 
In the ovens on the coast, besides flakes and rough 
knives of chert and flint, are found flake-knives of obsi- 
dian, a rock which only occurs in the volcanic district of 
the North Island, and also adzes and stone axes of every 
degree of finish and variety of material. Although there 
is no positive evidence in the latter case that more highly 
finished implements were in use by a people contem- 
poraneous with the Moa, whose remains, collected by 
