80 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



of an average thickness of 6 inches above the marine sands, and being 

 generally thicker where the cave is highest. This fall was, without doubt, 

 caused by the interior of the cave gradually getting drier. During the whole 

 time of the formation of this remarkable deposit, the cave appears to have been 

 occasionally inhabited, as evinced by the great number of bones and of small 

 quantities of charcoal and ashes enclosed in the bed under consideration. 



Above this agglomerated bed another remarkable layer had been deposited, 

 generally 3 or 4 inches in thickness, mostly consisting of refuse matter 



from human occupation, and of ashes, so that I adopted the name of dirt bed 



for the same. It was especially in some localities, as for instance near the 

 entrance of the cave, replete with kitchen middens of the Moa-hunters. I 

 wish, however, to point out that the fall of the rocks from the roof did not 

 cease during its formation or even afterwards, as all the beds upwards, even 

 those of European origin, have small lumps of such scoria, or even larger 

 blocks, embedded in them. 



I believe, therefore, that this dirt bed was forming during a more regular 

 occupancy of the cave by the Moa-hunters; moreover, 1 think that the con- 

 nection of the cooking places and kitchen middens of the Moa-hunters out- 

 side the cave, amongst the dunes, with the dirt bed, has been traced satisfac- 

 torily in the foregoing pages. 



But now, as it were at once, the Moa-hunters disappear from the scene; 

 but not without affording an insight into their daily life, by leaving us some of 

 their polished and unpolished stone implements, a few of their smaller tools, 

 made of bone, a few personal ornaments, as well as fragments of canoes, whares, 

 and of wooden spears, fire-sticks, and other objects too numerous to mention; 

 but by which the fact is established that they had reached already a certain 

 state of civilization, which in many respects seems not to have been inferior 

 to that possessed by the Maoris when New Zealand was first visited by 



Europeans. 



At the same time, if we consider the position of the kitchen middens on 

 the dunes in the vicinity of the cave, and those which I discovered on the lines 

 of inner dunes in the neighbourhood of Christchurch, even the most ardent 

 defender of the groundless assertions that the Moas only became extinct some 

 80 or 100 years ago, must admit that at least in this portion of the island 

 these gigantic birds were exterminated at a period when the physical features 

 in this part of the Canterbury plains near the sea were different from what 

 they are now, that large lagoon-like lakes have since been filled up, and sand 

 dunes of considerable width have been added to those then existing. In one 

 word, those changes during quarternary times have been of such m; 

 that it is impossible to estimate, even approximately, the length of time neces- 



