G2 Transactions, — Miscellaneous. 



Howev 



have been brought into the cave from the outside, there was nothing which 

 could prove that there had been a regular occupation by the Moa hunters. 

 I therefore set the labourers to work to go through the agglomeratic bed 



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once more, and I was delighted to find, very soon, that this time my expecta- 

 tions were not doomed to disappointment. 



After having passed through that bed, which I found to be here 6 inches 

 thick, another ash bed of a thickness of 3 inches was reached, in which I ob- 

 tained several Moa bones, some of them calcined, others in a splendid state of 

 preservation, belonging to Euryapteryx rheides and Meionomis didiformis, as 

 well as some pieces of charred wood. 



Proceeding with the utmost care, several large stones were reached covered 

 with several inches of sand, some of them blackened or split by the action of 

 fire, and placed in such a position as to show that evidently an oven had here 

 been excavated in the sands, these stones, like the remains of the meal taken 

 here, having probably been trampled repeatedly over, and before the ash and 

 dirt beds had been deposited above them. 



In digging round this spot I obtained the upper mandible of Aptornis de- 



fossor in a fine state of preservation, and a miantitv of Mna. hrm*n. nlon twn 



wooden sticks made of pukatea (A iherosperma novce-zealandice) for producin 



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fire. This simple apparatus, the only one found in the cave, has the pecu- 

 liarity that fire, instead of being obtained by friction lengthwise, was procured 

 by giving the upper stick a turning motion. 



However, I may add that this was not the only mode by which the Moa 

 hunting population obtained fire, as in the same lower beds firesticks of the 

 other kind were also found, resembling, in this respect, those belonging to the 

 tipper or mollusk eating population, which are used at the present time by the 

 Maoris, and are called kauwahi by them. 



About 4 feet from this oven we came across some large pieces of egg-shells, 

 of which many had still the lining membrane attached, proving, by their form 

 of curvature, that they were portions of a Dinornis egg of very large size. 



Towards the western side of the cave, partly buried in the sands, partly in 

 the ash-bed below the agglomerate, a well preserved skull of a fur seal, pro- 

 bably Arctocephalus lobatus, was obtained. 



Having been so far successful, I had the sea sands examined over a con- 

 siderable space, and to a depth of seven feet, when water was reached. Since 

 then I have been boring near the same spot, and found that the sea sands con- 

 tinued for another 5 feet before the rock on the bottom of the cave was 



reached, thus showing that there is here a total thickness of 12 feet of marine 

 sands in the cave. 



