130 • Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



game from existence, and reducing themselves to a comparative state of 

 starvation. 



But, say some, this was their mode of capturing them for food. 



My answer is, then they would have taken them out of the waterhole, and 

 the bones, instead of being found where they were, would have been scattered 

 about the surface near their camping ground, or, if thrown into the pit, would 

 have shown some marks of having been handled. 



From the great preponderance of opinion in favour of fire as the agent, we 

 woiddalmost.be led to think that this country had once been a perfect Gehenna. 

 They say fire could occur from natural causes without the agency of savages, as 

 by lightning, by meteors, by spontaneous combustion, and by volcanos. All 

 this may be possible, but let us consider the circumstances attending such 

 phenomena. 



First, it being only in the chapter of accidents that fire would occur from 

 such causes, we* should naturally suppose they would be of very rare occur- 

 rence, so much so that we could not rationally suppose that the same thing 

 would occur over and over again, often enough to cause such frequent 

 slaughtering of birds in this small waterhole as to pack in their bones to a 

 depth of from 2 to 4 feet deep. 



Again, it would be very extraordinary for fire to surround any part of a 

 country, and thus close the birds in. 



Fire almost invariably runs in a face, and not fast enough to overtake birds 

 with such long legs, that is if they were at all inclined to use them, and if any- 

 thing would give them an inclination to use them it would be fire. Then, in 

 such a case, for them to stop, gather in a small waterhole, and allow them- 

 selves to be thus smothered, would manifest an amount of stupidity that none 

 of the brute creation has been known to possess. But, for argument's sake, 

 allowing such to have been the case, for about 400 birds of this large size to 

 have been roasted in so small a compass in one mob would be a physical 

 impossibility, inasmuch as they would have made a pile 50 or 60 feet high 

 and the unlikelihood of the same cause occurring often enough, with such long 

 intervals, to complete such a work by tens or twenties, makes it appear 

 so unnatural and inconsistent to me that I can only look on it as a vagary. 



Again, as fire only occurs in the dry summer season, this would be the 

 time of gestation, and the same as in the case of being bogged, we would 



expect egg-shells, not the smallest particle of which (as I have said before) could 

 we find. Further, if fires were so frequent there would have been left about the 

 surface pieces or particles of charcoal; this would, by the wind and sudden 

 showers of rain, have made its way with other silt to the pit, but the same as 

 in the case of the egg-shells, we failed to detect the smallest speck. 



