CorENso.—On the Moa. 105 
parts before that Mr. White knew Maori,—I confess I feel strange. The 
only ready solution to my mind is that Mr. White in this matter has been 
half deceived; that is, he heard something long ago (just as Sir G. Grey 
and others heard it), and the rest has been in the course of many years 
evolved therefrom or added thereto, or both. 
9. Of the Rev. R. Taylor's statement, which he calls ** An Account of the 
First Discovery of Moa Remains." * 
I have often of late read and considered with no small astonishment, 
what Mr. Taylor has here stated. I could enter into it fully, dissect it, and 
say a good deal upon it; but, as I have hitherto kept myself from doing so, 
I will still forbear. This much, however, I deem it right to say (bearing in 
mind the adage: ** De mortuis nil nisi bonum," to which I would add—vel 
verum),—1. If Mr. Taylor really made those early discoveries and in that 
way, why did he not make them known? Like myself, he, too, had been 
early elected a member of the “ Tasmanian Society,” both of us together 
in 1841, with the Rev. W. Williams, and other residents in New Zealand ;t 
soon after which Mr. Taylor wrote a paper on the ** Bulrush Caterpillar of 
New Zealand ” (Cordiceps robertsii), which he sent to Tasmania, and it was 
published in 1842, in the first volume of the ** Tasmanian Journal of 
Natural Beience;"! while mine on the Moa, though written early in 1842, 
was not published in that **Journal" until 1848, and that in the second 
volume: my first papers being on some of our New Zealand Ferns. 2. Mr. 
Taylor says, ** The chief readily gave me the (fragment of a) bone for a 
little tobacco, and I afterwards sent it to Professor Owen, by Sir Everard 
Home; this took place in 1839. . . . . IthinkI may justly claim to 
be the first discoverer of the Moa.’’§ But in Professor Owen's paper on 
the Moa, he gives verbatim Mr. Taylor's letter to him, which he received 
through Sir Everard Home ; it is dated ‘“ Whanganui, February 14, 1844 " 
(five years after!) and in it, Mr. Taylor, in writing of his single visit to the 
East Cape with the Rev. W. Williams in 1839, on his first arrival in 
New Zealand, says, (after) mentioning his discovery of Moa remains at 
Whaingaihu—? Whangaehu, “I have found the bones of the Moa in this 
stratum, not only in other parts of the Western, but also on the Eastern 
Coast and at Poverty Bay; from whence in 1839 I procured a toe of this 
* Trans. N. Z. Inst., Vol. V., Art. III. 
t Vide “ Tasmanian Journal," published lists of members. 
. ¢ In that paper Mr. Taylor says: ‘‘ The Aweto” pete cca only found at 
the root of one particular tree, the Rata, the femalo Pohutukawa. * * These curious 
plants are far from being uncommon. The natives eat them when fresh (!) The seeds of 
the fungus are nourished by the warmth of te: insect," etc., etco.— Tasmanian Journal, 
Vol. I., p. 307. 
$ Trans. N. Z. Inst., Vol. V., p. 98. 
