74 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



extinct), altlioiigli never having been seen by either the passing or the rising 

 generation of aborigines, are, notwithstanding, both in habit and uses, well 

 known to them from the descriptive accounts repeatedly rehearsed in their 

 hearing by the old men of the villages, descendants of ancient days. This 

 very silence, however, I embrace as a valuable auxiliary evidence, bearing 

 me out not a little in my conjecture, that the bones of the Moa will pro- 

 bably be found lying either in the upper stratum of the secondary, or the 

 lower strata of the tertiary formation. In fact, unless we suppose this 

 immense bird to have existed at a period prior to the peopling of these 

 islands by their present aboriginal inhabitants, how are we to account for 

 its becoming extinct, and, Hke the Dodo, blotted out of the list of the 

 feathered race ? From the bones of about thirty bu'ds found at Turanga in 

 a very short time and with very little labour, we can but infer that it once 

 lived in some considerable numbers ; and, fr^om the size of those bones, 

 we conclude the animal to have been powerful as well as numerous. What 

 enemies, then, had it to contend with in these islands — where, from its 

 colossal size, it must have been paramount lord of the creation — that it 

 should have ceased to be ? Man, the only antagonist at all able to cope 

 with it, we have already shown as being entirely ignorant of its habits, use, 

 and manner of capture, as well as utterly unable to assign any reason why 

 it should have thus perished. 



The period of time, then, in which I venture to conceive it most probable 

 the Moa existed, was certainly either antecedent to or contemporaneous with, 

 the peopling of these islands by the present race of New Zealanders. 



But we will proceed, and endeavour to ascertain (as we proposed in the 

 second place to do) to what order or family it is likely that the Moa belongs ? 

 In making this enquiry, we have little to assist us but the bones before us ; 

 and these, from the writer's situation in this land, without any known 

 osteologic specimens for comparison, or any scientific books for reference, 

 and also from the bones being so few in variety, will, he fears, afford him 

 but little help. 



From an attentive consideration, however, of these bones, we are 

 necessarily led to conclude that the animal must have been of large size 

 and great strength ; and from the shortness of the tarsus (when compared 

 with the length of the tibia) we also perceive it to have been short-legged. 

 From its size, we shall naturally be led to seek for its affinities among 

 either the Raptorial or Basorial Orders ; but from its tarsi possessing only 

 articulations for three toes, we are at once precluded from supposing that 

 it belonged to the former order ; to which we may also add, first, the 

 negative evidence that not a single specimen or fragment of a wing-bone 

 has yet been found ; and, second, the judicious observation of Cuvier (in 



