Txorne.—On Moas and a Moa-Hunter Encampment. 91 
of two pelves. These bones are much decomposed, and were lying fully 
six feet below the present top of the highest mound of cooking stones, 
pebbles, and shells. W.M‘Leod informed me that seven years ago this 
ridge was covered with a beautiful carpet of Muhlenbeckia and coprosma ; no 
sand was visible at all, and he was not less surprised than the Maoris to 
see these skeletons unearthed as the vegetation died and the sand was 
drifted in-shore. 
I have five of these human skulls here marked; amongst them is one of 
a child (probably a girl of thirteen or fourteen years) ; it is the only skull 1 
observed exhibiting marks of violence, viz., an abrasion of the skull at the 
back of the head. 
In one of the human skeletons, the small and large bones of the legs 
were doubled up, evidently undisturbed since burial; the bones of the | 
upper part of the body were scattered around, but the distal (ankle) ends of 
the tibie (shin), and the proximal (upper) ends of the femora (thigh) were 
embedded in sand, shewing that this individual was buried in a cramped 
posture. 
The Maoris knew not of the existence of this burying-place till exposed 
to view gradually during the past seven years, by the disappearance of the 
vegetation and removal of the sand. 
At Whale Cove, a little rocky inlet, with a small beach at its head, the 
sand commenced to drift only three or four years ago, and has now covered 
about four acres, being curiously blown up hill to the left, owing to the 
height of the cliff. Of Moa bones, an imperfect metatarsus was all I found 
here ; but in the coprosma-covered bank, a human skeleton was falling out 
of the sand; some bones remained in the bank as evidence where it had 
lain. I also found the wing bone of a bird (probably albatros) broken in 
the middle, one end ground smoothly off, with four little holes very neatly 
bored, two in each side. It had been used perhaps as a musical instru- 
ment, but more probably hung as an ornament (see Plate Iil., Figs.16, 17, 
IBjes 
At Stockyard Bay, a mile or two further south, on Captain Eyre’s land, 
is a semicircular cove, with a beach for a quarter mile. The sandy ridge 
here, as at M‘Leod’s Bay, is a saddle between the sea and a swamp of the 
aiharuru River ; vegetation has not been destroyed by wind and sand, 
except in a place where an old stockyard once stood; here, on an old 
cooking-place, I found one vertebra bone and some small valueless frag- 
ments of a small species of Moa. 
Being now convinced of the wider range of the Moa in those parts than 
I at first thought probable, I examined, in company with Mr. Cheeseman. 
the extensive sand-hills between Bream Head and Manaia. 
