Travers.—Notes on the Extinction of the Moa, 71 
advantage of direct information on the subject from a generation of natives 
that has passed away. As the first explorer of the artificial Moa beds, his 
opinion is entitled to great weight. Similar conclusions were also drawn by 
Buller, who is personally familiar with the facts described in the North 
Island, in an article that appeared in the “ Zoologist’” for 1864. The fresh 
discovery, therefore, of well-preserved remains of the Moa, only tends to 
confirm and establish this view, and it would have been unnecessary to 
enlarge on the subject by the publication of the foregoing notes, which were 
long since written, but for the dissimilar conclusions arrived at by Dr. 
Haast in a recent address to the Canterbury Institute, which, from the 
large amount of interesting and novel matter it contains, will doubtless 
have a wide circulation.” 
Mr. W. D. Murison, in a paper also read before the Otago Institute, in 
September, 1871,* after referring to the papers by Dr. Haast, already 
alluded to, says:— 
“Tt is not my intention, however, to follow Dr. Haast in the interesting 
investigations he made. I have indicated some of the leading points of 
his exhaustive address, and I must pass on to my own observation. At 
the foot of Roughbridge, where the Puke-toi-toi Creek enters the Maniototo 
Plain, I assisted in forming a station some ten years ago; and although I had 
had occasion to observe, near the coast and in other parts of the interior, : 
the bones of the Moa, I was at once struck with the frequency of their 
occurrence at this place, as well as with the excellent state of preservation 
inwhichthey werefound. Scarcely a hole could be dug without some of these 
remains being exposed, and when the land came to be cultivated, bones and 
fragments of egg-shells in great number were laid bare by the plough. The 
bones most frequently picked up under these conditions were those of the feet 
of the larger species of the Dinornis, and the femur and tibia of the Aptornis— 
a bird which stood some three feet high, whose remains are rarely met with 
in other localities. It was not till 1865, however, that any discovery of 
cooking places was made. These were first observed by my brother, whem, 
in riding along the banks of the ereek, he noticed a chain of hollows, which 
he conjectured were Maori ovens filled up. ; 
“Further investigations showed that they had been used for cooking 
the Moa, great quantities of bones being discovered in each oven that was 
examined. The ovens lay from ten to fifteen yards from the creck, and 
Were covered with about six inches of silt. Mixed with the pieces of half- 
charred bones were innumerable fragments of Moa egg-shells. In some of 
the cooking places these latter were found in layers, showing that a vast 
* «Trans, N. Z. Inst.,” Vol. IV., p. 120. 
