68 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
These natives further informed me that a Moa resided in a certain high 
mountain in Te Whaiiti district, nearly five days’ journey into the interior, 
. in a N.W. direction from the place where we now were, and that there I 
should find people who had actually seen the animal. If I was little 
inclined to believe in the story of its existence before, I was much less 
inclined to do so now; however, as my route lay that way, I noticed this 
information among my memoranda, determining to make every possible 
enquiry after it. 
Fifteen days after this I ead at Te Whaiiti, the principal village of 
that district, and not far from the residence of the second Moa. Here, 
however, as before, the people had never seen a Mva, although they had 
always heard of, and invariably believed in, the existence of such a creature 
at that place. They, too, had not any bones in their possession ; thongh 
such, they said, were very commonly seen after heavy floods. The following 
day I passed close by the mountain where this Moa had resided for so many 
years, but noticed nothing more than usual (although I availed myself to 
the utmost of the use of my pocket telescope), save that this part of the 
country had à much more barren and desolate appearance than any I had 
hitherto witnessed. 
I returned in the autumn to the Bay of Islands, without gleaning any 
further information relative to the Moa. 
It should, however, appear (from information which I have recently 
received from the Rev. W. Williams), that, very shortly after my leaving 
Poverty Bay, a Moa bone was brought him by a native, which he imme- 
diately purchased.. The natives in the neighbourhood hearing of a price 
being given for such an article as a bone, which they had ever considered as 
of little worth, were stimulated to exertion, and a great number, perhaps 
more than a hundred persons, were soon engaged in the field, actively 
searching after Moa bones ; the result was that Mr. Williams soon had the 
pleasure of receiving a large quantity of fossil bones, some of which were 
of an enormous size, and in a good state of preservation. The bones, though 
numerous, were not in any great variety, chiefly comprising such as I have 
already mentioned, i.e., those of the femur-and tibia, together with those of 
the tarsus, the lower part of the dorsal vertebre, and a portion of the pelvis. 
Altogether the bones of nearly thirty birds, apparently of one species only, 
must have been brought to Mr. Williams. From the great difference in the 
sizes of some of them when compared with each other, Mr. Williams came 
to the conclusion that the animal to which they once belonged must have 
been very long-lived. Whilst, however, I do not perceive how far this 
inference is to be correctly deduced from the mere difference in the size of 
the bones, we know that longevity is common to very many of the feathered 
