74 Transactions.—M iscellaneous. 
extinct), although never having been seen by either the passing or the rising 
generation of aborigines, are, notwithstanding, both in habit and uses, well 
known to them from the descriptive accounts repeatedly rehearsed in their 
hearing by the old men of the villages, descendants of ancient days. This 
very silence, however, I embrace as a valuable auxiliary evidence, bearing 
me out not a little in my conjecture, that the bones of the Moa will pro- 
bably be found lying either in the upper stratum of the secondary, or the 
lower strata of the tertiary formation. In fact, unless we suppose this 
immense bird to have existed at a period prior to the peopling of these 
islands by their present aboriginal inhabitants, how are we to account for 
its becoming extinct, and, like the Dodo, blotted out of the list of the 
feathered race? From the bones of about thirty birds found at Turanga in 
a very short time and with very little labour, we can but infer that it once 
lived in some considerable numbers ; and, from the size of those bones, 
we conclude the animal to have been powerful as well as numerous. What 
enemies, then, had it to contend with in these islands—where, from its 
colossal size, it must have been paramount lord of the creation—that it 
should have ceased to be? Man, the only antagonist at all able to cope 
with it, we have already shown as being entirely ignorant of its habits, use, 
and manner of capture, as well as utterly unable to assign any reason why 
. it should have thus perished. 
The period of time, then, in which I venture to conceive it most probable 
the Moa existed, was certainly either antecedent to or contemporaneous with, 
the peopling of these islands by the present race of New Zealanders. 
But we will proceed, and endeavour to ascertain (as we proposed in the 
second place to do) to what order or family it is likely that the Moa belongs ? 
In making this enquiry, we have little to assist us but the bones before us; 
and these, from the writer’s situation in this land, without any known 
osteologic specimens for comparison, or any scientific books for reference, 
and also from the bones being so few in variety, will, he fears, afford him 
but little help. 
From an attentive consideration, however, of these bones, we are 
necessarily led to conclude that the animal must have been of large size 
and great strength ; and from the shortness of the tarsus (when compared 
with the length of the tibia) we also perceive it to have been short-legged. 
From its size, we shall naturally be led to seek for its affinities among 
either the Raptorial or Rasorial Orders; but from its tarsi possessing only 
articulations for three toes, we are at once precluded from supposing that 
it belonged to the former order; to which we may also add, first, the 
negative evidence that not a single specimen or fragment of a wing-bone 
has yet been found; and, second, the judicious observation of Cuvier (in 
