1 36 Transactions, — Miscellaneous. 



first, up to the deep half-moon-shaped spot where the spring would not allow 

 the silt to precipitate, but would carry it off through the outlet, and that when 

 the bone deposit commenced the waterhole was in this half-moon shape. If 

 it is asked, why are there no bones in the surrounding lagoons % my answer 

 is, that as they are all (as far as I have examined) surface lagoons, they would 

 have been frozen over when the cold drove the birds into the spring water 

 which never froze, and, as I have previously remarked, perhaps thermal. 



As for the geese, it appears to me, from the skeleton, that they have been 

 as much a land bird as a water-fowl. The bones of their body are not much 

 larger than those of the domestic goose, especially the breast bone and pelvis. 

 The keel of the breast bone is scarcely more than rudimentary. This differs 



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from the breast bone of any water-fowl that has ever come under my observa- 

 tion. However, those better versed in ornithology than myself should settle 

 this point. The hip and leg bones, in size and length, are immensely dispro- 

 portionate to the bones of the body, that is, for a water-fowl, and are in every 

 particular (excepting the loophole in the hind part of the foot joint) propor- 

 tionately the same as that of the Moa. If water-fowl, their feet, when 

 swimming, would have struck some 20 inches under the water, which, accord- 

 ing to my limited knowledge of water-fowl, would have been altogether apart 

 from the ordinary course of nature. 



I must here record my humble opinion that they were not aquatic fowl. 

 Therefore the same causes that extirpated the Moa would have exterminated 

 them. Hence their bones in the pit with those of the Moa. Further, I 

 believe that had they been transferred to a warmer climate at the time of their 

 decline we would yet have had the noble birds living. 



As for the few eagle bones, and bones of other small birds found in the 

 deposit, I would think that (on account of the attraction offered to flesh-eaters 

 by this long-standing meatshop) chance would be quite sufficient to account 



for their presence. 



As the rat bone was found in the debris that had been wheeled out of the 

 pit, and taken from the top to the bottom, it may have come from very near 

 the surface where we found that rats had been burrowing in the bones j there- 

 fore the presence of rat bones in the pit cannot be taken as a proof that they 

 were deposited contemporaneously with the Moa bones. 



In order to give you a clear conception of the intensity of cold at some 

 seasons of the year in the neighbourhood of the bone-pit, as well as to support 

 my theory, I would refer you to the fact that in the winter of 1873 our mail- 

 man in coming over the ranges from the Hyde and Kyeburn Roads, past the 

 bone-pit, got his feet so badly frost-bitten that he was two months in the 

 hospital at Naseby in consequence. 



In 1866 there was a fall of snow here 2 feet deep, and the ground did not 



