CoLENSO. — On the Moa. ' 105 



parts before that Mr. White knew Maori, — I confess I feel strange. The 

 only ready solution to my mind is that Mr. White in this matter has been 

 half deceived ; that is, he heard something long ago (just as Sir G. Grey 

 and others heard it), and the rest has been in the course of many years 

 evolved therefrom or added thereto, or both. 



3. Of the Rev. R. Taylor's statement, which he calls ^^ An Account of the 

 First Discovery of Moa Remains.'''^' 



I have often of late read and considered with no small astonishment, 

 what Mr. Taylor has here stated. I could enter into it fully, dissect it, and 

 say a good deal upon it ; but, as I have hitherto kept myself from doing so, 

 I will still forbear. This much, however, I deem it right to say (bearing in 

 mind the adage : " De mortuis nil nisi bojiiivi.," to which I would add — vel 

 veruni), — 1. If Mr. Taylor really made those early discoveries and in that 

 way, why did he not make them known ? Like myself, he, too, had been 

 early elected a member of the " Tasmanian Society," both of us together 

 in 1841, with the Eev. W. Wilhams, and other residents in New Zealand ;t 

 soon after which Mr. Taylor wrote a paper on the " Bulrush Caterpillar of 

 New Zealand" (Cordiceps robertsii), which he sent to Tasmania, and it was 

 pubUshed in 1842, in the first volume of the " Tasmanian Journal of 

 Natural Science ;"| while mine on the Moa, though written early in 1842, 

 was not published in that "Journal" untiL 1843, and that in the second 

 volume : my first papers being on some of our New Zealand Ferns. 2. Mr. 

 Taylor says, " The chief readily gave me the (fragment of a) bone for a 

 little tobacco, and I afterwards sent it to Professor Owen, by Su* Everard 



Home ; this took place in 1839 I think I may justly claim to 



be the first discoverer of the Moa."§ But in Professor Owen's paper on 

 the Moa, he gives verbatim Mr. Taylor's letter to him, which he received 

 through Sir Everard Home ; it is dated " Whanganui, February 14, 1844 " 

 (five years after ! ) and in it, Mr. Taylor, in writing of his single visit to the 

 East Cape with the Eev. W. Williams in 1839, on his first arrival in 

 New Zealand, says, (after) mentioning his discovery of Moa remains at 

 Whaingaihu — ? Whangaehu, "I have found the bones of the Moa in this 

 stratum., not only in other parts of the Western, but also on the Eastern 

 Coast and at Poverty Bay; from whence in 1839 I procured a toe of this 



* Trans. N. Z. Inst., Vol. V., Art. in. 



t Vide " Tasmanian Journal," published lists of members. 



I In that paper Mr. Taylor says: " The Aweto " (.') — Cordiceps — "is only found at 



the root of one particular tree, the Rata, the female Pohutukaiua. * * * These curious 



plants are far from being uncommon. The natives eat them when fresh (1) The seeds of 



the fungus are nourished by the warmth of the insect," etc., etc. — Tasmanian Journal, 



Vol. I., p. 307. 



§ Trans. N. Z. Inst,, Vol. V., p. 98. 



