Vaux.—On the Probable Origin of the Maori faces. 9 
having in many instances, overlapped: thus, rude and finely worked 
specimens have been, occasionally, found even in Hurope so placed as to 
imply their use by the same population simultaneously. On the sup- 
position, however, that the Palsolithic and Neolithic periods are sufficiently 
well marked for ordinary purposes of comparison, and bearing in mind 
that rude as well as polished instruments of stone have been abundantly 
found in New Zealand, it has been-assumed that the people who made and 
used the former and rudest of them must have belonged to those remote 
periods ; in other words, that there must have been here, as it seems most 
likely there was once in Europe, a race of men contemporary with the 
Post-Pleiocene or Mammoth Period. The main argument in favour of this 
theory rests on the further supposition that all the Moa bones are those of 
birds extinct for ages, a large number of these remains having been met 
with in close connection with the flint weapons whereby they were probably 
slain or cut up. Now, if this be so, it has been further not unreasonably 
urged that the hunters of the birds must have been contemporaneous with 
the weapons they used. I ought to add that, with the bones, have been 
also found a great quantity of the shells of their eggs, as well as the 
ovens in which they were cooked. 
Now, no doubt, this theory had a certain consistency so long as it was 
supposed that most of the bones of the Moas had been found at a depth of 
many feet under the surface soil, implying, as this circumstance, naturally 
did, a long lapse of time, since the birds themselves were actually alive on 
the plains of New Zealand: it was, moreover, asserted that the present 
people have no traditions of the existence of the bird, which they could not pos- 
sibly have forgotten. On this point, however, it would seem quite sufficient 
to remark that the absence of any direct allusion to the Moa in the songs 
or traditions of the Maoris may just as well have arisen from the probable 
fact that they were really so familiar with the existence of it, that it would 
naturally have no place in their traditional lore ; while, for the same rea- 
son, it would have had none of that peculiar fame among the natives, which 
the discovery of its remains has aroused among European philosophers. 
While it lived, the abundant relics of it recently met with shew clearly 
enough that it could not have been at all rare ; and when it perished, per- 
haps, not very long before the present generation, it simply ceased to be 
talked about. In making this statement, however, I must not be supposed 
to deny that Moa bones of considerable antiquity do, from time to time, 
turn up; I only affirm that that they have not remained long enough in the 
soil to lose all their albumen and to have been thus converted into true 
fossils. A 
