Vaux.—On the Probable Origin of the Maori Races. 13 
natives asserted to Governor Weld that the Moa, like the Emu, defended 
itself by trampling on it adversary, and warned him not to go behind them 
as they kicked like horses ;* two facts, which it is scarcely possible to 
suppose were purely inventions of their imaginations. Again, we are told 
by Mr. Hamilton that he spoke with an old Maori in 1844, who remembered 
Captain Cook, and who said he had seen the last Moa, describing it as 
having a long neck like a horse. Mr. Pollock, too, in an early account of 
New Zealand, affirms the same thing, and states that the natives told him 
that when food was scarce, the birds were easily entrapped, an assertion 
then more probable, from the remark of the old man just mentioned, that 
the plan usually adopted for catching the Moas, was to drive a post into the 
ground before the caves they frequented, with a stout noose attached to it. 
Lastly, Dr. Hector himself noticed, in the neighbourhood of Jackson Bay, 
well-worn tracks through the high scrub about sixteen inches wide, and 
such, too, as could not have been made by any animal or bird now existing 
in the Southern part of the Island. It has also been stated, I believe on 
good authority, that dogs have been known to suck the Moa bones, shewing 
clearly that these specimens, as would also have been the case with the skin 
and and muscles of the neck recently found, must have retained in them 
some nutritious matter. 
Putting, then, all these statements together, I confess I do not see how 
any conclusion can be arrived at, but that the final extinction of the Moas is 
quite recent. Professor Owen has, I believe, supposed that the Dodo and 
the Moa passed away together, probably about two centuries ago : but there 
seem now, fair grounds for thinking, that some specimens of the latter 
were really alive, at least in the most Southern parts of the Middle Island, 
as lately as the commencement of the present century.+ It has been stated 
by Dr. Hector, that the character of the plains and of the brushwood in the 
recesses of the province of Otago, are pecularly favourable to its habits. 
In concluding, then, this portion of my paper, I think I am entitled to 
say, that, so far as the story of the Moa goes, the credit of the natives, as a 
truthful race, is unimpaired ; and that their not having preserved in their 
traditions any special references to it, nowise affects the truth of their 
further assertions of having first colonized the Northern Island about 500 
years ago.; 
(2.) ErHnonoeicat. 
I take next, the connexion and affinities real or imaginary, between the 
es * Hector, 1. c. 
+ Hutton, “ Trans., N. Z. Inst.,” Vol. VIL, p. 138. 
+ Vide post, Art. I.—[Ed.} 
