Hecror.—On the Remains of a Dog found by Captain Rowan. 245 
discloses any points of similarity that are maintained at all periods of 
growth. 
For further comparison I am enabled also to show two dog skulls found 
by Mr. Travers among the remains of a cannibal feast he discovered on the 
east side of Wellington Harbour, and of which he has already given an 
account to the Society. There is no evidence of these skulls, being of 
ancient date, but they are clearly of the same breed as the true Maori dog. 
Captain Rowan’s discovery I will give in his own words :— 
** I send you some bones, which I think, from the teeth and the skull, 
are the remains of a dog. I have failed to suggest to myself any possible 
means by which they could have attained the position where found, 
except by the animal having crept in of itself and died there; or by its 
having been washed in by the stream which appears to have at one time 
run on the gravel bed overlying the marlstone. It has been suggested that, 
as the spot is much frequented at times by Maoris for fishing, one of them 
may have killed a dog, and stuck its body into the hollow tree. Putting 
aside the improbability of a Native taking the trouble to bury a dog, with 
the sea close at hand to throw it into, and the absence of any Native account 
to corroborate this idea, I think the following facts worth attention :— 
“The different strata above the marlstone are continually receding 
owing to the action of the weather ; consequently, a few years ago what is 
now the face of the cliff was then hidden, and it is only since the last slip 
took place that the portion of the trunk containing the bones became ex- 
posed. 
** When found, the palate was tightly impacted with dead wood, which 
I had to remove with a knife, so as to be able to see clearly the number and 
shape of the upper jaw teeth. It therefore seems to me that the animal 
must have become a skeleton before the wood had decayed. Also, I think 
it would have been quite impossible for a human being to have choked up 
the orifice of the tree with river sand in the manner in which I found it: the 
sand had every appearance of being drifted in by running water. 
“ Supposing for an instant that the remains are those of a dog which 
lived at à time when stratum No. 6 in the accompanying section was the 
bed of a river; would it not be natural for that dog to have had his lair 
in a hollow tree and near to water? Would it not be natural for a dog, 
when feeling the approach of death, to erawl into his lair and to die there ? 
And if so, what more likely than that the tree, by a landslip, or a flood, 
should ultimately lie water-logged at the river bottom ? Or, the slip might 
have occurred while the dog was alive, but asleep, and unable to escape ; 
