12 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
extensive and long occupied camping grounds of the Moa-hunters have been 
explored, and many essential points relative to their mode of life have been 
ascertained. By these means it has been shewn, that the argument for 
their remote antiquity, derived from the discovery of rude as well as highly 
finished stone implements, falls to the ground. Clearly they are found 
thus intermixed, as having been in use at one and the same time by the same 
people. As both these classes, together with a large quantity of flakes of 
flit and chert have been discovered in these camping grounds, it is rea- 
sonable to suppose that each type of implement was used just as might be 
required for the matter in hand. If, for instance, the Moa-hunters wished 
to grub up fern roots, they would use, as the Maoris do now, the hard and 
often highly polished adzes ; if they were desirous of stripping the flesh off 
the tough neck of the bird, they would make use of the sharp flakes of 
flint ; if, lastly, they were anxious to break the thick bones of the tibia, to 
get at the marrow, they would use the rough and massive kapus, as sug- 
gested by Dr. Hector. The fact is, no satisfactory reasons can be deduced 
for the age of those, who used these weapons, merely from the circumstances 
under which they have been found ; but, at the same time, there is clearly 
no proof of their remote antiquity ; moreover, what may be called a manu- 
factory of flint flakes is constantly associated with the Moa bones where 
most abundant. Again, recurring to the idea of the ignorance of the 
natives, as inferred from the want of traditions about this bird, it is certain 
from more careful enquiry, that so little ignorant were the natives, as a 
matter of fact, that, so early as the first discoveries of 1839, they joined 
readily with the English settlers in their further search for them, at the 
same time making no mistakes or blunders about the objects they were 
looking for, as is distinctly affirmed by Sir George Grey in a letter to the 
Zoological Society, himself, from having mixed as much as any one with 
the people, being a very competent witness on this subject. 
Indeed, in a subsequent letter to Mr. Mantell, Sir George Grey states 
definitely that when he first came to New Zealand, the natives told him that 
the Moas were fast disappearing, but that they thought one might, perhaps, 
be found—and Mr. Mantel] has, incidentally, pointed out that the corroded 
state in which the egg-shells of the Moas are often found is no test of their 
antiquity, nee caused, as was at first supposed in Europe, by the long 
continued action of water ; it is rather due to the wearing influence of drift 
sand, especially at Waingongoro where Bishop Williams procured his first 
specimen, a place, by the way, which the natives, then resident there, 
asserted was the spot where their ancestors had first landed. 
Nor are we, indeed, now without direct testimony on this head; for the 
