1 38 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



toitoi, having brought them down on the edge of the plain, but it will yet be 

 proved that the original deposits were near the source of the creeks where 

 the water would have been warm and free from ice. It may not be out of 

 place to mention (although I am not writing about eels) that at the present 

 time there is a creek which empties into the Taieri River, at the very head of 

 the Maniototo Plain, that for some distance from its source never freezes. 

 The eels congregate there in June and remain all the winter. This proves that 

 even the eels find relief from cold in spring water, and it is quite apparent 

 that the Moa would have found even more relief than the eels, inasmuch as 

 tlie contrast between cold and heat would not be so great between the water 

 of the Taieri and that of the creek as it would be between hard frozen ice 

 and snow and the spring water. 



This is my theory as plainly as I am able to put it, and I should not con- 

 sider it fair for any person to criticise it from a literary point of view, as I 

 make no pretensions to being a scientist, nor yet even to having had a pass- 

 able education, which is more my misfortune than my fault; my only guide is 

 observation and the study of cause and effect. 



Art. XI. — Notice of the Earnscleugh Cave. By Captain F. W. Huttox, 

 F.G.S. With Remarhs on some of the more remarkable Moa Remains 

 found in it. By Professor Millen Coughtrey, M.D. 



[Read before the Otago Institute, 14^/i September, 1874.] 



During the course of last summer I twice visited this cave, accompanied 

 on both occasions by Dr. A. T. Thomson, and although it has already been 

 very well described by Dr. Thomson himself (Trans. N.Z. Inst., IV., p. Ill), 

 by the Hon. Captain Fraser (ibid, V., p. 102), and by Mr. Cockburn 

 Hood (ibid, YI., p. 387), the importance of the subject will, I hojie, be a 

 sufficient excuse for my bringing it under your notice once more. 



The rocks of the district are mica-schist, dij)ping 10° S.S.E., and the cave 

 in question appears to have been formed by a gentle slipping of a portion 

 of tlie rocks towards the valley of the Conroy, tlie dip not having 

 been altered by the slip. The cave itself is very irregular in outline, but 

 always narrow, and quite different in character from the ordinary caves found 

 in limestone countries. At the furthest point that can be reached the cave 

 communicates with the surface by means of a small opening in the roof, and 

 it is continued still further on by a fissure too narrow to get into. This 

 surface opening at tlio end, as well as the lateral opening mentioned by 

 Captain Fraser, ensure thorough ventilation to the whole of the cave. The 



