8 <3 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Art. III. — Notes on an ancient Native Burial Place near the Moa-hone 

 Point, Sumner. By Julius Haast, Ph.D., F.R.S., Director of tlic 



Canterbury Museum. 



Plates III., IV. 



{Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 23rd December, 1874.] 



In the first days of October of last year I was informed by Mr. G. J. Quelch, 

 of Woolston, that during the process of excavations made near the cutting by 

 which the Sumner road leads to the Moa-bone Cave flat, the workmen had 

 disinterred several human skeletons, together with a number of stone imple- 

 ments, I therefore proceeded at once there to obtain information upon the 

 excavations already executed, and to watch further discoveries. 



In order to widen the road, which hitherto had led at a very sharp angle 

 to the cutting, deposits were being excavated which fill a small depression to 

 the west of it amongst the rocky bluffs, forming here the shores of the estuary. 

 These deposits, rising gradually to 20 feet above high-water mark, cover an 

 area of about 100 feet broad by about 180 feet long, and were found to be 

 separated in their lower portion into two parts by a bed of volcanic rock, well 

 rounded by the waves of the sea, and of which the westerly portion is the 

 smallest. 



The lowest bed — No. 1 in the two sections (PI. III.), attached to these notes 

 consists of true marine sands, and contained, besides some fragmentary shells, 

 a few well-rolled seal bones. This deposit is, as far as laid open, from 4 to 7 

 feet thick. Upon it a sharply-defined layer reposes, No. 2 in the sections, of a 

 totally different character, being a true slope deposit. It consists principally 

 of loam, enclosing a few angular and subangular fragments of volcanic rocks 

 from the adjacent hills. Some portions show traces of vegetable soil. This 

 bed must have been formed either when the sea at this spot was so deep — no 

 estuary existing then so far eastward — that no marine sands could be deposited 

 at the foot of the cliffs, or during a period when Banks Peninsula had been 

 raised to a somewhat higher level than it has at the present time so as to be 

 here removed from the deposition of drift-sands. It has a thickness of 4 feet 

 8 inches on its eastern and 6 feet 10 inches on its western side, narrowing to 

 about 2 feet in its central portion. It contained no sign of human occupancy, 

 but a few Moa-bones were embedded in it, of which a pelvis of Palapteryx 

 elephantopus was observed at letter A in the accompanying section. 



The bed No. 3, which was confined to the eastern and central portions of 

 the ground excavated, consisted generally of drift-sands about 3 feet thick, 

 divided into several layers by darker streaks, that once may have been 

 vegetable matter. On the eastern side, in some spots, the sands were re- 



