9 4 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



They contain mostly remains of mollusks, Mytilus, Haliotis, Chione, Mesodesma, 

 Lutraria, and several others, together with fish and dog-bones; small pieces of 

 obsidian are also embedded amongst them. 



In their vicinity, and below high-water mark, a small flat stretches towards 

 the river channel, which is in many localities literally paved with Moa-bones. 

 The excavations which we undertook on this piece of ground proved that 

 the lowest bed of human origin, consisting of boulders, once forming tbe 

 cooking ovens, had been arranged at least 2 feet below the surface of the flat. 

 Here and there a chipped stone implement embedded amongst the bones, and 

 of exactly the same character, proved that the same people who feasted on and 

 near the summit of the sand-hills, camped here on the flat, which must then 

 have been high and dry, and, as before observed, situated about 3 feet above 

 high-water mark, as the fires with which the Moa-hunters heated their 

 boulders at the bottom of these ovens could not otherwise have burnt. 



As the time at my disposal would not allow me to make a thorough inves- 

 tigation of the whole station, I selected some of the principal spots from 50 

 feet high downwards to the flat below high-water mark, in which, over a small 

 area, the contents of the kitchen middens were carefully examined by me. 

 The results were very gratifying, as not only did I thus gain a good insight 

 into the life of the Moa-hunting population in that part of New Zealand, but 

 I obtained also some exceedingly valuable portions of Moa skeletons, amongst 

 others several complete skulls with upper and lower mandibles and tympanic 

 bones, a few of which at the time had still the atlas, epistropheus, and some of 

 the uppermost cervical vertebrae in their proper position. 



It appears from the specimens collected, that the Moa-hunters of the Shag 

 Valley must have had such abundance of game that they selected for their food 

 only the most valued portions of the birds killed. 



The principal species occurring here are Palapteryx crasms, Euryapteryx 

 rheides, and, in a minor degree, Euryapteryx gravis, and Palapteryx elep/ian- 

 tojms, other Dinornis species being only represented by a few bones of D. 

 robuMus, and some of the smaller kinds. Of the small Meionornis species, 

 casuarinus and didiformis, only a few remnants were found. It thus appears 

 that these latter were more confined to the open plains. 



Unlike the leg bones in the other Moa-hunter encampments, which, with 

 very few exceptions, were always broken for the extraction of the marrow, 

 here only the tibia (long bone) had been subjected to such fractures, only a 

 few of them being found entire. On the other hand, the greatest number of 

 the femora and metatarsi were unbroken, the small quantity of marrow in 

 them not having been thought of sufficient value to pay for the trouble of 

 extraction. 



