102 Transactions.— Miscellaneous, 
mention Dr. E. Dieffenbach, the Naturalist to the New Zealand Company. 
This gentleman was here in the years 1839-1841, and I had the pleasure of 
being acquainted with him while he stayed in the Bay of Islands, where, for 
some time, he lived next door to me. He saw and “overhauled ” all my 
specimens (even then rich in shells, and insects, and ferns, and in geological 
samples), and many conversations we had respecting the Moa. In his 
work, in two volumes, on ** New Zealand," he twice mentions the M. oa, but 
only in a very slight way; in fact, he, then, could not say any more, for he 
did not himself collect a single Moa bone, although he was industrious in 
obtaining all kinds of natural specimens. He saw, however, what few 
broken bones I had at that time, obtained from near the East Cape through 
the Christian Maori teachers, who had been sent there by us after our early 
visit made there in January, 1838. Dr. Dieffenbach thus alludes to the 
Moa in his work :—“ The natives (of Taranaki) could not understand what 
induced me to ascend Mount Egmont; they tried much to dissuade me 
from the attempt, by saying that the mountain was tapu ;* that there were 
ngarara (crocodiles) on it, which would undoubtedly eat me ; the mysterious 
bird Moa, of which I shall say more hereafter, was also said to exist there, 
But I answered that I was not afraid of those creations of their lively 
imagination,” ete. And again, in writing of “ special changes in New 
Zealand," he says :—“ If a geological cause, such for instance as a diminu- 
tion of the size of the island, attended by an alteration of climate and a 
diminution in the means of subsistence, has contributed to the extinction of 
the struthious Moa in New Zealand, and of the Dodo in the Mauritius, it is 
no less sure that, since New Zealand began to be inhabited by its aboriginal 
race, the agency of man has effected a part of that eternal fluctuation in the 
organic world, the knowledge of which has been one of the most important 
results of modern science,’’}+ And this is all he says! Some time after, 
however (in 1845), we find him reading a paper ** On the Geology of New 
Zealand," before “ the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science," in which he says:— That he has examined into all the 
traditions respecting the existence of the Moa, or great bird of New Zealand, 
and concludes that it has never been seen alive by any natives of New 
Zealand ; the rivers in which its bones have been found flow between banks 
from thirty to sixty feet high, and, as they are continually changing their 
course, the remains of the Moa may have been derived from tertiary 
fluviatile strata.”§ (Of course I cannot help thinking the Doctor was 
indebted to my published paper on the Moa for this information, as it is 
* Lit., strictly forbidden, or preserved. 
f “ Travels in New Zealand,” Vol. I., pp. 140 and 417. 
t At their fifteenth meeting, held June 21, 1845. 
$ From the‘ Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science," Vol. IL., p. 451. 
