546 Prof. Liversidge—Moa Egg-shell. 
quartzite, that I found in the South Mahratta country was a well- 
made thin leaf-shaped flake, made of a chert strongly resembling the 
intertrappean chert rock capping the “ One-tree-hill ? at Shellugi, to 
the §.S. E. of Bijapur, which I have described in my Memoir on the 
South Mahratta Country. 
TV.—Anatysis or Moa HecG-sHett. 
By Pror. A. Liversives, F.C.S., F.G.S., University of Sydney. 
Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, New Zealand, August, 1880. 
AM indebted to the kindness of Dr. Julius von Haast, F.R.S., 
Director of the Canterbury Museum, New Zealand, for the 
specimen which is the subject of this note. The little packet of frag- 
ments was labelled Moa Hunter, Kitchen Midden Sandhills, near 
Moa Cave, Point Sumner, New Zealand. 
All the fragments appeared to be more or less weathered, and the 
edges, except where freshly fractured, were smooth and rounded, 
and their general appearance seemed to indicate that they had been 
subjected either to the action of blown sand or to that of water 
charged with carbonic acid gas ; both influences may of course have 
been at work together. 
The fragments were all very brittle; the fractured edges plainly 
showing, without the aid of a lens, the presence of two distinct 
layers in most of the fragments; the inner or concave layer, 7.e. the 
one facing the interior of the shell, having a pale brown colour, 
the middle portion being quite white, whilst the outer surface of the 
shell presented a pale tint of brown; judging from the different 
depths of tints, the varying thicknesses, and appearance, the pieces 
were apparently fragments of several different shells. 
It is unnecessary for me to give any account of the microscopical 
structure of the shell, since that has been so ably done by Prof. F. 
W. Hutton, of Canterbury College, New Zealand (vide Transactions 
of the New Zealand Institute, vol. iv. p. 166). 
The pores are readily seen to penetrate right through the sub- 
stance of the shell, on account of the brown-coloured matter which 
most of them contain; some appear to penetrate only to a certain 
limited distance; but this is because the direction of the pores is 
not straight, and a portion of their length is cut off in the section ; 
their apertures are visible on the inside of the shell as well as on 
the outside: the outer openings, however, are considerably larger and 
are funnel shape—many of these pores can be seen to pass through 
from side to side by the unassisted eye. 
The middle portions of the egg-shell are shown to be of softer 
material than the two surfaces, since most of the weathered pieces 
show a groove running along the edges. 
On ignition all the pieces of shell experimented upon blackened, 
and emitted an ammoniacal odour, thus plainly showing that they had 
by no means lost the whole of their organic matter, and on dissolving 
portions in acetic acid flocculent particles of organic matter were 
left floating in the solution ; this organic residue, was collected, and 
