Wellington Philosophical Society. 413 



this sharp-edged flakes of stone would be best adapted. I am inclined to 

 think that the old Maori woman who officiated as cook at one of the Moa- 

 hunters' encampments would have found it a most trying task to dismember a 

 Moa with a polished stone adze or a green-stone mere, even if she would 

 profane so valued an implement for such a purpose ; and I also think that 

 unless the meat were very much overcooked the hungry Moa-hunters, however 

 large their stock in trade of polished weapons might be, would prefer to pick 

 up a sharp-edged stone to assist them in cutting slices from the ponderous 

 drum sticks. The fact is that the adzes and other polished tools were no 

 doubt then, as they are now, used as implements for tilling the soil and 

 grubbing up fern root, and when occasion required, for felling a tree or a foe, 

 and that for cutting up a pig or flaying a seal, a Maori, if he had no knife, 

 would at the present day use sharp stone flakes, of which there are abundance 

 about all Maori cooking-places, especially on the sea coast, where their services 

 are most required. I may mention as a further confirmation of this view that 

 among a very interesting collection recently brought by Mr. Henry Travers 

 from the Chatham Islands, where no Moa bones have ever been found, there 

 are many of these flakes, together with stone implements of all kinds, rude 

 and polished, specimens of which are on the table for your inspection. 



The other evidence advanced by Dr. Haast respecting the absence of any 

 traditions among the Maoris of the existence of this remarkable bird within 

 the memory of the race is merely negative, and against which contrary evidence 

 can be advanced. Dr. Haast quotes Mr. Colenso, who was well acqainted with 

 the Maoris at the time when the former existence of the Moa first became known 

 to Europeans, and who admits that they had a certain amount of indefinite 

 information concerning the existence'^ of large birds like the Moa prior to that 

 date, but attributes it to the traditions of the cassowary, which they had pre- 

 served from the time of their original migration from Hawaiki. Dr. Haast also 

 suggests, as a further source of their knowledge, that these were the bones of a 



* Polack, whose observations were made many years before the first discovery of 

 Moa bones by Europeans, says : — " That a species of the Emu, or a bird of the genus 

 Struthio, formerly existed in the latter (North) Island I feel well assured, as several large 

 fossil ossifications were shown to me when I was residing in the vicinity of the East Cape, 

 said to have been found at the base of the inland mountain of Ikorangi. The natives 

 added that in times long past they received the tradition that very large birds had 

 existed, but the scarcity of animal food, as well as the easy method of entrapping them, 

 had caused their extermination." And speaking of the South Island he states: — "I 

 feel assured, from the many reports I received from the natives, that a species of Struthio 

 still exists on that interesting (South) Island, in parts which, perhaps, have never yet 

 been trodden by man. Traditions are current among the elder natives, of Atuas, covered 

 with hair, in the form of birds, having waylaid former native travellers among the forest 

 wilds, vanquishing them with an overpowering strength, killing and devouring, etc." — 

 Polack'a "New Zealand," Lond., 1838, Vol. I, pp. 303, 307. 



