Otago Institute. 545 



been advanced by Mr. Booth in his paper, there could be no doubt that the 

 information which it contained was a valuable contribution to the records of 

 the Institute. The paper was valuable, because it embodied the independent 

 observations of an intelligent man, who seems to have devoted a good deal of 

 time and thought to the investigation of this bone deposit. Mr. Booth's 

 primary object in preparing his paper was to describe, according to his own 

 ideas, the manner in which these bones had come to be deposited in the swamp 

 at Hamilton ; but there arose out of his deductions on this subject the larger 

 question of the date of the existence of the moa. Mr. Booth concluded that 

 the bird became extinct several thousand years ago, and his conclusions, there- 

 fore, were not altogether dissimilar to those of Dr. Haast, although that 

 gentleman fixed the date of the extinction of the moa at somewhere about five 

 hundred years back. 



Captain Button ; Three thousand years ago is the time, I think, fixed by 

 Dr. Haast. 



Mr. Murison pointed out that the evidence upon which Dr. Haast, Mr. 

 Booth, and others rested their theory of the moa having become extinct at a 

 very remote period was altogether of a negative character. It was quite true 

 that the bird had lived in these remote ages, but the positive evidence which 

 many of the settlers, in this province at least, were able to bring forward, went 

 to show that the moa lived within the last hundred years, and probably within 

 the present century. The discoveries of moa remains on the Maniototo plains, 

 in his opinion, established beyond all doubt the fact of the comparatively 

 recent existence of the moa. On the banks of the Puketoitoi creek, some 

 years ago, were found on the surface of the ground bones in a tolerably perfect 

 state of preservation ; and when it is borne in mind bow rapidly the bones of 

 stock on the runs become decayed through the action of the atmosphere, this 

 circumstance of the presence of the moa bones on the surface goes a long way 

 towards proving that the bird existed in recent times. In the same neigh- 

 bourhood, moreover, valuable confirmatory evidence of this theory was 

 obtained in the kitchen middens and ovens of the moa-hunters. An examina- 

 tion of these showed that these people used both rude chert and polished stone 

 implements — a circumstance which, if acknowledged, at once upsets Dr. 

 Haast's theory of a palaeolithic age in which the moas and moa-hunters lived 

 and in which rough stone implements only were used by the latter ; and a 

 neolithic period, or age in which polished implements were used ; the latter 

 period dating from a time long anterior to the arrival of Europeans in the 

 islands. Mr. Booth's paper, although somewhat lengthy, was the representa- 

 tive of a class of contributions which he would gladly see presented mora 

 frequently to the Institute. There could be no doubt that a feeling had got 



which 



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