640 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



THE MOA AT HOME. 



EDWIN E. HOWELL. 



Every one who has written anything about New Zealand for the past thirty 

 or forty years, whether about its inhabitants, its archseology, its natural history 

 or its geology, has had much to tell us about the great wingless birds that once 

 inhabited that group of islands. From this great mass of material we have en- 

 deavored to sift out the leading and most important facts and present them to the 

 readers of the Bulletin in a brief summary. 



The Rev. Richard Taylor, F. G. S., thinks he. was the first discoverer of the 

 Moa (the name given to all these great fossil birds). While journeying to Poverty 

 Bay, in the early part of 1839, he found the bone of a Moa near the East Cape, 

 which the natives told him was the bone of a large bird which they called Tarepo, 

 and which lived on the top of Hikurangi, the highest mountain on the east coast. 

 He found later that the natives of the west coast called the bones Moa, and were 

 entirely ignorant of the name Tarepo. 



It seems probable, however, that to the Rev. W. Colenso, F. G. S., belongs 

 the honor of first discovery of the Moa, as he was the first, also, to investigate 

 the nature of the fossil remains and determine the struthious affinities of the birds 

 to which the bones belonged. In 1842 he wrote : " During the summer of 1838 

 I accompanied the Rev. W. Williams on a visit to the tribes inhabiting the East 

 Cape district. While at Waiapu I heard from the natives of a certain monstrous 

 animal, while some said it was a bird, and others a person. All agreed that it 

 was called a Moa; that in general appearance it somewhat resembled an- immense 

 domestic cock, with the difference, however, of its having a ' face like a man's; ' 

 that it lived on air, and that it was attended or guarded by two immense Tuataras, 

 who Argus-like, kept incessant watch while the Moa slept. Also, that if any one 

 ventured to approach the dwelling of this wonderful creature he would be invaria- 

 bly trampled on and killed by it. A mountain named Wakapunaki, at least 

 eighty miles distant, in a southerly direction, was spoken of as the residence of 

 this creature; here, however, only one existed, which it was generally contend- 

 ed, was the sole survivor of the Moa race. Yet they could not assign any possi- 

 ble reason why it should have become all but extinct. While, however, the ex- 

 istence of the Moa was universally believed (in fact to dare to doubt of such a be- 

 ing amounted, in the native estimation, to a very high crime), no one person 

 could be found who had ever seen it. Many of the natives, however, had from 

 time to time seen very large bones, larger, from their account, than those of an 

 ox ; these bones they cut up into small pieces for the purpose of fastening to their 

 fish hooks as a lure, instead of the Haliotis shell." 



Other Europeans have been told this same myth, and other high mountains 

 have been designated as the dwelling place of this strange creature. It is hardly 



