1 32 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Thence it follows that the conditions forbidding their existence at the 

 present time must have been the cause of their extinction, and in the course of 

 their extinction their bones accumulated in this pit. 



From facts that have come under my personal observation it appears to me 

 that the Moa existed in extremely remote periods; so much so that my limited 

 knowledge of the sciences will not furnish me with words to name the periods I 

 refer to. The features of this country unmistakably indicate that it has at some 

 remote period been a succession of lakes and islands. Now, at whatever time 

 you place that period, I believe the Moa then existed. Immediately above 

 Roxburgh, along the Molyneux, there is a flat, or terrace, four miles long by 

 one mile wide ; it has evidently been a lake, from the fact that the whole flat 

 is a bed of shingle, to a depth in some places of 40 feet, and the same kind 

 of deposit being found along the entire length of the Molyneux goes to show 

 that it has been brought down by the river, lodged in this lake or basin, and 

 formed a level surface under the water until such time as the obstructions 

 below Roxburgh were removed ; then the river gradually cut a channel 

 through the flat, as well as many feet down into what we unscientific men call 

 "bed-rock;' 



Some ten years ago, when searching for gold, I was driving a tunnel from 

 the water's edge on this bed-rock, and under about 40 feet of shingle, on the 

 very rock bottom, I came on the skeleton of a Moa. 



I debated the subject in my own mind, as well as conversed with 

 several intelligent men, as to how it possibly could have got there, and we 

 could come to no other conclusion than that the carcass had been brought 

 down by the rapid current of the river, and when it came in the still water of 

 the then lake it sank to the bottom. That bottom being the bed-rock, and the 

 40 feet of shingle over the skeleton, would go to show that the lake was yet 

 in its earliest period, as the filling-in process appears to have been just then 



commencing. 



The same summer I was sinking a shaft on quite a level piece of ground, 

 about half-way up Conroy's Gully, in the Dunstan district, and I went 

 through a sort of ashy-looking clay all the way to the bed-rock, which was 20 

 feet deep, and on the rock I found pieces of Moa egg-shells, which I h 



now in my house. 



From these facts I cannot but believe that the Moa existed in far earlier 

 periods than is generally supposed. I shall now state a fact that has also come 

 under my observation, as being strong circumstantial evidence that at least in 

 this locality the extinction of the Moa took place far anterior to any time yet 



mentioned by any one. 



I find below a certain level, that would leave the whole Maniototo plains 



under water, there are no Moa-bones to be found, with the exception of about 



