Haast. — On a Moa-hunter Encampment. 97 



employed the same mode of manufacture and used tlie same form of rude stone 

 implements as the primitive races of Europe and North America. 



No polished stone implements of any kind came into my possession during 

 the search made, except a few pieces of yellowish sandstone^ of which one had 

 a carefully polished cutting edge along one side, and another piece had a groove 

 as if it had been used for polishing purposes. However, as these pieces were 

 lying on the surface, there is no certainty as to their real age. 



Conclusions. 



It will be seen from these short notes that the observations made by me in 

 the Province of Canterbury, as to the age and position of the kitchen middens 

 in which the remains of the Moa are to be found, have been fully confirmed 

 by the examination of similar beds at Shag Point, about 200 miles distant. 

 We have always been told that the southern portion of this island must have 

 aflforded a shelter to the Moa to a recent date, but the evidence offered by the 

 facts brought to light during these excavations strongly proves the contrary. 

 I may be answered that the Moa may have outlived the Moa-hunters, and we 

 are triumphantly told about Moa-bones with skin and ligaments, even recently 

 found, but I wish to point to the facts brought forward in my paper on the 

 same subject in Yol. lY., *' Transactions, New Zealand Institute," in which I 

 have, and I trust conclusively, shown that there are exceptional causes to 

 which this remarkable preservation is due. When the bones of Mega- 

 lonyx jeffersoni were found in the Mississippi Yalley, which had the cartilages 

 still adhering to them (see " Lethcea geognostica Bronn" Yol. III., page 

 1,010), nobody argued from this unusual occurrence that this gigantic sloth 

 had only been extinct for a short time ; and, in fact, the very position of the 

 different specimens of the Dinornithidce found in Otago (the Tiger-hill skeleton, 

 feathers in another locality, and the neck, etc., in the Earnscleugh Cave), 

 proves that they all owed their — sometimes only partial — preservation to 

 peculiarly favourable circumstances, easily to be accounted for.* 



The change of level between land and sea which took place after the kitchen 

 middens of the Moa-hunter had been formed, and before the shell-fish eating 

 population had visited the same locality, is a further strong evidence that a 

 portion of the Southern Island underwent some physical changes after the time 

 when the Moa became extinct, at least in that part of the country. I have, of 



* That organic bodies can be preserved for a considerable time is sufficiently proved 

 by the human bodies excavated in the last few years from the peat deposits of Northern 

 Germany. They are said to be " mummies in a marvellously preserved condition," and 

 of whicli skin, hair, and tendons have been best preserved. Bronze ornaments and seven 

 glass beads were found with one, Eoman coins belonging to the time of Septimus Severus 

 (194 A.D.) and iron weapons with two others. See " Moorleichenf unde in Schleswig- 

 Holstein." Von Heinrich Handelmann and Ad. Pansch (Kiel; Schwers), and of which 

 an interesting notice appears in the "Academy," 19th September. 1874. 







