122 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



eaten IMoa-flesli, were to my knowledge currently mentioned. One of these 

 sealers was named Meiirant. He was well known about Otago. 



In 184:4 little was known among the European population of the existence 

 of Moa-bones, and very few had as yet been found. But the Maoris always 

 knew them when they saw them. It is a curious fact to note that they should 

 have a name for the extinct bird's bones if it had never been known to their 

 ancestors as a living bird. I never heard a Maori give a name to any fossil, 

 a shell for instance, and they always used to ridicule our exploring parties 

 for carrying about useless stones, when fossils were collected by us. 



In 1850 H.M. steam surveying ship "Acheron" arrived at Port Cooper, 

 now Port Lyttelton. Captain Frederick J. O. Evans, one of the surveying 

 officers, then master of the ship and now Hydrographer to the Admiralty, 

 discovered, a mile above Sumner, on the Heathcote and Avon estuary, a 

 cave which he called Moa-bone Cave. The name is well known now in 

 Canterbury. Erom this cave he carried on board the "Acheron" a large 

 number of Moa-bones. But with them were some few other bones, about 

 which neither Dr. Lyall nor Dr. Forbes, the ship's surgeons (engaged also 

 respectively as botanist and geologist) could make up their minds. On my 

 return to the "Acheron," from an expedition inland to the Hurunui, the 

 bones were shown to my Maori guide and travelling companion, Hone Paratene, 

 (John Patterson) lately a Member of the House of Pepresentatives. As they 

 were being handed to him one by one he pronounced them unhesitatingly to 

 be Moa-bones. Presently he stopped at one which had puzzled the doctors. 

 He said he was "raru-raru" (puzzled, confused or doubtful) about them. At 

 last, after some time spent in examining and thinking and turning it over, he 

 said it was a seal's bone. The two doctors then at once recognised it as such. 

 It is remarkable that, as the rest of the bones were handed to him, Hone only 

 hesitated at those about which the doctors had also been doubtful. 



In 1849, when exploring inland between Jacobs Piver, Tuturau, and the 

 Molyneux, I engaged, either from the Bluff or the Maori pah, at the eastern 

 entrance of New Piver (Oreti), a Maori named Wera or Whera. He told me 

 that in olden times, i.e., before his day, they used to drive a stout post into the 

 ground above the entrance of a cave and to hang from it a rope with a slip- 

 knot. By this the Moa would be caught when passing into or out of the cave. 

 If not absolutely true, the statement is at least curious from its coinciding 

 with the fact that it is so common to find quantities of Moa-bones in caves. 



Mr. "William Guise Brittan, the Commissioner of Crown Lands, states 

 that when he arrived in 1800 with the first Canterbury settlers, one of the 

 liapaki Maoris told him that before he, the informant, was born his father had 

 hunted the Moa. Should I hereafter recall to mind any other particulars I 

 may have heard formerly respecting the Moa, you shall have thon\ 



