56 PROF. OWEN ON THE EXTINCTION OF DINORNIS. [Jan. 27, 
which is in perfect condition, please to tell me, and I shall have it 
prepared as soon as possible. 
‘* Believe me, my dear Professor Owen, 
* Your’s most faithfully, 
“Prof. R. Owen, F.R.S., « Jutrus Haast.” 
British Museum, London.” 
In perusing with much interest the foregoing letter, I jotted down 
a few notes that occurred to me, and send the following as an 
Appendix to Dr. Haast’s remarks :— 
In the traditions of the Maories, handed down by tales and chaunts 
from father to son, collected and translated by Governor Sir George 
Grey, K.C,B., are some relating obviously to the Moa*. Through 
how many generations such traditions had travelled there is no evi- 
dence. Neither does Dr. Haast communicate in the foregoing inter- 
esting letter the other alleged facts on which conviction could rest 
as to the indubitableness of the extinction of the species of Dinornis 
“many hundred years ago,” If the “‘ manner of their occurrence” 
relates to the depth “6 or 8 inches of vegetable soil” covering the 
‘‘ cooking-places or ovens,” that evidence is insufficient as to their 
date. 
The native oven and contiguous heap of bones discovered by Mr. 
Cormack in the North Island of New Zealand, in the bay Opito, on 
the east coast, were covered by a “stratum of sand” of 3 feet depth. 
The “kitchen-midden” there was chiefly of remains of Dinornis, 
with bones of smaller birds and of fishes; and, with reference to the 
former, it is significant of a knowledge of the ‘‘ traditions,” that Mr. 
Cormack’s ‘native attendant remarked that they were the remains 
of the food cooked here at a former period and eaten by the then 
native inhabitants” {. 
The geological judgment, to which Mr. Cormack defers, as to the 
{ime required for the accumulation of 3 feet of drift-sand over a 
cooking-oven on a sand-cliff by the sea-shore would not be favour- 
able to assigning to it a date of “several hundred years.” Mr, 
Cormack does not notice any human remains or works in his 
“‘ kitchen-midden ;’’ nor were any of the former in the collection of 
bones transmitted to me. Dr. Haast’s negative evidence is the more 
valuable, since remains of the human skeleton were evidently sought 
for, and would have been recognized by so accomplished a naturalist 
and anatomist. I conclude, therefore, whatever may be the date of 
these Moa feasts, that the moderate or middle-sized species of these 
large birds were then in numbers sufficient to stave off that fell famine 
which at or near the epoch of their extinction drove the Maories to 
cannibalism. But upon this point, and in the absence of the more 
gigantic species of Dinornis from the “ovens” and “ middens”’ dis- 
covered by Dr. Haast, I may refer to the concluding paragraph of 
my first memoir “on Dinornis” (Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. iii. p. 270). 
* See Sir George Grey’s remarks, below, p. 116.—Ep. 
+ “On Dinornis,” Part VI. (Trans. Zool. Soe. vol. iv. p. 146). 
+ Ib. p. 146. 
