96 Transactions. 



In my account of this spot I shall be guided by the letters which I wrote 

 at the time of my sending home the collections of which our president has 

 suggested that I should furnish extracts. 



The only other important discovery which I shall have to notice, is the 

 old hainga at the stream now know^n as Awamoa, a name given by me instead 

 of its original name of Te Awakokomuka, to prevent confusion with other 

 streams of the latter name in the district. This hainga, which we found 

 in 1852, afforded further unmistakable proof of the co-existence of man with 

 the Moa. The bones and egg-shells of Dinornis and its kindred, mixed with 

 remains of every available variety of bird, beast, and fish used as food by the 

 aborigines, being all in and around the umus (or native ovens) in which they 

 had been cooked. Although my collection from this place reached England in 

 1853 it remained unopened until after my arrival there in 1856, when I caused 

 it to be conveyed to the crypts of the British Museum, and there unpacked 

 it in the presence of the great authority on our gigantic birds. Professor Owen. 

 With the exception of two small collections which were selected for me by 

 Professor Owen, and which I gave, one to the Museum of Yale College, U.S., 

 and the other to that of the Jardin des Plantes, the whole of this collection is 

 now in the British Museum. The fragments of egg-shells from these umus 

 varied in size from less than a quarter of an inch of greatest diameter to three 

 or four inches. These, after careful washing, I had sorted, and having, with 

 some patience, found the fragments which had originally been broken from 

 each other and fitted them together, I succeeded in restoring at least a dozen 

 eggs to an extent sufficient to show their size and outline. Six or seven of 

 the best of these I gave to the British Museum after their purchase of the 

 collection; one is in the Museum of the College of Surgeons; the rest, 

 including one very beautiful egg with a polished ivory-like surface, are still in 

 my ownership somewhere in England. Some idea of the labour entailed by 

 this attempt to rehabilitate eggs may be gathered from the fact that several 

 of those restored consisted of between 200 and 300 fragments. I may add 

 that in the markings, size, and so forth, of the eggs (making allowance for 

 the alteration of the former toward the ends of the eggs) I made out about 

 twenty-four varieties, of which I have specimens. 



At a meeting of the Zoological Society a discussion which followed the 

 reading of Professor Owen's first paper on ' this collection, first showed 

 me how unprepared were the scientific men at home to admit the co-existence 

 of man with the Moa, but at its conclusion I conceive that doubts on that 

 head were removed from the minds of most of those present. 



With the exception of a slight notice in the New Zealand " Spectator " of 

 1853 no attempt at a detailed account of the Awamoa hainga has, so far as I 

 remember, been yet published. I therefore hope that this portion at least of 



