62 Transactions.—Miseellaneous. 
been by the use of the boomerang, or a similar weapon, to be hurled at 
their prey.”’ 
Upon the question whether his Moa-hunters were cannibals, he says :—* 
“Bearing in mind what the Hon. W. Mantell states in respect to the 
occurrence of the bones of men, together with those of the Dinornis, dog, 
and seal in the kitchen middens of the North Island, I concluded that the 
Moa-hunters must have been cannibals; however, the most careful search, 
continued for a number of days, has never brought to light the smallest 
portion of a human bone at the Rakaia. And, although this evidence is 
merely of a negative character, it is strong enough to induce the belief 
that the Moa-hunters were not addicted to anthropophagy, as Mr. Mantell’s 
observations might suggest. Had the inhabitants of the Rakaia encamp- 
ment been cannibals, there is no doubt in my mind that, amongst the 
thousand fragments of bones passing through my hands, at least some of 
the human skeleton should have appeared to bear witness. Mr. F. Fuller, 
who lately discovered a Moa-hunter encampment in Tumbledown Bay, near 
Little River, found, close to it amongst some sand-hills, the traces of a 
cannibal feast; but there was nothing to connect the one with the other.” 
And ee 
‘Mr. Mantell is reported to have stated that there was evidence that 
cannibalism prevailed at the time the Moas were used for food, but only m 
the North Island, confirming my observations made at the Rakaia and else- 
where, that the Moa-hunters in this island were not anthropophagi. How- 
ever, I still doubt very much whether the inhabitants of the North Island, 
in the same era, were cannibals, as I believe that the same favorable 
localities, formerly selected by the Moa-hunters, were also used by the 
Maoris as camping grounds, by which the mixture of the kitchen middens 
of both races has been produced. Even were we to admit that the inhabi- 
tants of each island had belonged to a different race, or that they had not 
communication with each other, so that different habits of vital import- 
ance had become formed in each of them, the discovery of obsidian in the 
kitchen middens of this island clearly proves that such arguments would 
be fallacious. The pieces of obsidian being of such frequent occurrence, 
we are obliged to assume that regular communication existed between both 
islands, and it is difficult to conceive that, under these circumstances, 
the one island should have been inhabited by cannibals and not the other. 
Nor could different races have inhabited the two islands during the exter- 
* “Trans. N. Z. Inst.,” Vol. IV., p. 89. 
+ * Trans, N. Z. Inst.,” Vol. IV., p. 21. 
