THE MO A A T HOME. 641 



necessary to add, however, that subsequent explorations have failed to reveal the 

 hiding place of " the last Moa," and that we owe our entire knowledge of the 

 bird to the study of its fossil remains. These have been found in many places 

 and under varying conditions. 



According to Dr. Haast, " the oldest beds containing Moa bones, are proved 

 to belong to the great glacier period, where they occur in morainic accumulations 

 and silt beds, as well as in fluviatile deposits, formed by rivers having issued from 

 the terminal face of gigantic glaciers during that period. Here they have been 

 traced as low as loo feet below the surface. In the loess deposits they are also 

 of frequent occurrence, where their existence has been proved to a depth of more 

 than fifty feet. Advancing to the quaternary period, Moa bones are found in 

 turbary deposits or in silt or loess on the plains or lower hills, in caves and in 

 fissures of rocks, in fact, everywhere where favorable conditions for their preser- 

 vation prevailed. 



"From the observations we were thus able to make the conclusion has been 

 forced upon us that these gigantic birds must have been able to sustain life over 

 a long period, because the same species which occur in the lower lacustrine and 

 fluviatile deposits are again found in the bogs and swamps, in the fissures of rocks, 

 and in the kitchen middens of the Moa-hunting race, which latter evidently marks^ 

 the end of the Dinornis age." 



Dr. Hector mentions heaps of bones with stone implements, on the top of 

 Corrio Mountains (South Island), 5,000 feet above the sea level. 



Mr. B. S. Booth, (Transactions of New Zealand Institute, 1874), gives a 

 very interesting description of a Moa swamp at Hamilton. 



Mr. Booth says: "The surface lagoon, before being disturbed, was rather 

 higher than the surrounding surface, and consisted of from one to two feet of 

 black peat mixed with a blackish silt which rested on and was mixed with the 

 bones to the very bottom " Below the bones there was one foot of a fine whit- 

 ish, very soft, and somewhat elastic clay, "The bones were deposited princi- 

 pally in the northeast part of the lagoon, in a space exactly the shape of a half 

 moon, forty feet from point to point, and eighteen feet across the center, and 

 varying from two to four feet deep." 



He estimates that nearly seven tons of bones were taken out of this space, 

 most of which were badly decomposed, and that the number of individual birds 

 could not have been less than 400. The bones " lay in every imaginable compli- 

 cation of tangle," with "no bone on top." 



"A great quantity of quartz gravel and smooth pebbles occurred among the 

 bones, and in the shallowest parts of the deposit, under pelves or breast bones 

 which had not been disturbed, they lay in bunches. "There was no gravel in 

 the lagoon except amongst the bones, and no small gutter or water course could 

 be found by which it might have come in." 



The only explanation, apparently, which can be given for the presence of the 

 pebbles is that they were brought there in the gizzards of the birds This theory 

 is supported by numerous instances where similar pebbles have been found con- 



