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Booth. — Description of the Moa Swamp at Hamilton. 135 



or without placing it in snow and ice, what would be more natural for them 

 than to step in to this comparatively warm water, which, to some extent, would 

 relieve their suffering from cold in their lower extremities. Thus, the period 

 when frost and snow began to set in I place as the commencement of the 

 deposit of bones in this pit. The accumulation would have been very gradual, 

 perhaps for centuries, and the periodical deposits would only have increased at 

 the same rate as the frost and snow. This process continuing, until not even in 

 the most favoured places would their eggs hatch, and the last of their race an ere, 

 therefore, doomed to annihilation, a period would arrive which must have 

 been with the poor birds a time of indescribable suffering. Thus afflicted witl 

 pain, famishing with hunger (as whatever their food was it lay deep under the 

 snow-mantle of the earth), and finding cruel nature arrayed against them, 

 pinching their bodies with piercing winds, from which they had no shelter, 

 and cutting their feet with ice and frost, were it only as an alleviation of pain 

 when dying, I can see nothing more natural than for them to have plunged 



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into this spring. The water being of the same temperature as the earth, would 

 feel quite warm to them, and there being no inducement for them to get out, 

 as their food was cut off, they would settle in deeper and deeper, and remain 

 till numbness and hunger put an end to their suffering. 



Hence I account for the bones being soundest on the top, as they would 

 have been deposited so much later. Hence, also, I account for there being no 

 bones of young birds on the top, as it was long after incubation ceased that the 

 old family was gathered to its resting place. Hence I account for the absence 

 of egg-shells, as these deposits only took place in the winter season, which was 



never the breeding season with the birds. And by the trampling round of 

 the birds, when in the spring, I account for the equal distribution generally of 

 the gravel amongst the bones ; the trampling being the disturbing cause from 

 which alone some bunches of gravel from the gizzards escaped by being covered 

 with a breast bone or pelvis. The patch of pelves I can only account for in 

 this way : — That as year after year, when the water was yet deep, a few 

 carcasses were decomposed on the top of the water, the heavy limbs would fall 

 off and sink, and the pelves being very porous, with, perhaps, skin and thick 

 feathers dried on the top by the sun, would lie on the surface of the water 

 until driven up to the edge of the lagoon by the fierce south-west winds which 

 still prevail here. 



Why 



spot? why were they not distributed through the lagoon? 



The only reason I can see is that the lagoon was there centuries before the 

 deposit commenced, and probably before the Moa existed; and as the south-west 

 side is the hill side, and the side from which the winds prevailed and surface 

 water would come, it became filled in with dust and light silt, from that side 



