Wellington Philosophical Society. 495 



been for many generations called 'The wing of the Hokioi,' from the tradition 

 of the appearance of the great bird at that place. When the Moa became 

 extinct the destroyer died also, having nothing left to feed on, and so both 

 these great creatures have disappeared, to be seen no more." 



Judge Maning also bears indisputable testimony to the assertion that the 

 flint and obsidian flakes found about the Moa-hunters' ovens and kitchen 

 middens cannot be considered as the slightest evidence of the existence of an 

 inferior race of men by whom these birds were exterminated. 



"Those flint flakes and obsidian splinters certainly have been used by all 

 aboriginal races all over the world ; but Dr. Haast says that the people who used 

 the greenstone, well-finished tools, were a difierent people from those who used 

 the flint flakes. This is absolutely not the case, for I have seen the obsidian 

 and flint flakes in full use myself; have seen the splinters knocked ofi" the 

 blocks of obsidian; the blocks were an article of traffic, and kept with great 

 care, and splinters knocked off" (it required some art to do it properly) as 

 they were wanted from time to time. These splinters were the ordinary 

 kitchen knives, so to speak; they were also used for cutting hair, cutting up 

 human bodies, for surgical instruments, for cutting flax and raupo. 



"The obsidian broke off" with an extremely fine edge, but it would not 

 last, and was quite useless for cutting wood, making paddles, canoes, or clubs — 

 the greenstone was used for these purposes, and the tools made of it were valued 

 far more than an equal bulk of gold ever was in the civilised world." 



Mr. Travers regretted that he had not been aware that the paper on the 

 Sumner Cave was to be read that evening, as he had in his possession a 

 quantity of bones and implements dug out of that cave, and along with them 

 the fragment of a gourd which had evidently been used for drinking purposes. 

 He might mention, as an interesting fact, that there was a family of Maoris 

 who frequently, for months at a time, occupy a cave in Port Nicholson under 

 exactly similar circumstances to the early Maori inhabitants of the Sumner 

 Cave. This cave is situate at less than a mile from the pilot station at the 

 Heads. There were six or seven Maoris living there, and he had frequently 

 visited them. They live chiefly on shell-fish. 



Mr. Webb remarked that a complete human skeleton, now in the Christ- 

 church Museum, had been found in the cave, no mention of which was made 

 in Mr. McKay's paper. He also stated that a fine deposit of Moa bones had 

 been lately found in the silt deposit that covers the hills round Lyttelton 

 harbour. 



Dr. Hector said that the only grounds Mr. McKay had for doubt as to the 

 recent date of the Moa's existence seemed to be the absence of Maori traditions 

 with regard to it. He could only say that modern Maoris seem to know all 

 about it. When he was at Hikurangi he sought out the oldest Maori, and 



