﻿Ha AST. — Moas and Moa Hunters. 73 



River, a luxuiiant vegetation delights our eye, wliere certainly throngliont the 

 whole year the Dinornis would have found ample nouriahment even close to 

 the ice. I say so with more confidence, knowing that the locality referred to 

 is now used as a ram paddoch, always assuming that the sheep is not of a more 

 hardy nature than those former inhabitants of the country. 



Judging from the structural character of the different species of Dinornis, 

 they must have inhabited the open country where such existed, and not the 

 forest regions, where not only innumerable impediments to locomotion would 

 have stood in their way, but where they also would probably have found little 

 food suitable to them. In the term ' open ' I include plains and hill sides in 

 the low lands covered with grass, fern, tutu (Goriaria ruscifolia), flax 

 (Phormium tenax), and cabbage trees (Cordyline AustrcdisJ, and the subalpine 

 regions, with btishes— Spaniards (Aciphylla), wild Irishman (Discaria 

 toumatou), and snow grasses. It has often struck me that to all appearance 

 the greater portion of the luxuriant vegetation of New Zealand is of compara- 

 tively little service to the present fauna, whilst it would produce more harmony 

 in the household of nature if we imagined that the seeds of the Phormium 

 tenax (the New Zealand flax), of the Cordyline Australis (the cabbage tree), of 

 the large species of Aciphylla (spear-grasses), the difierent species of Goprosma, 

 and many other plants, had been at one time the favourite food of the Dinornis, 

 whilst the roots of the Aciphylla, of the edible fern (Pteris esculenta), and 

 several other plants, might have provided an additional supply of food when 

 the seeds of the former were exhausted. Moreover, I have no doubt that the 

 difierent species of Dinornis, like those of the Apteryx, were omnivorous, so 

 that they did not despise animal food, and thus lizards, grasshoppers, and other 

 insects might also have constituted part of their diet. 



Another observation which I have been enabled to make convinced me 

 that the Dinornis species remained generally in certain localities, being of 

 stationary habits and not roaming over the count, y, and crossing rivers and 

 mountains in quest of food. In collecting the crop-stones lying with the 

 skeletons, I invariably observed that they must have been picked up in the 

 immediate neighbourhood. Thus, to quote only a few instances. In the caves 

 of Collingvvood, all the moa stones are derived from the quartz ranges close by, 

 in the Malvern hills from the amygdaloids of the same zone, and in Glenmark 

 only from the chert rocks in the neighbourhood. 



It has been the fashion to assert that the present native inhabitants of New 

 Zealand, the Maoris, are the race who have hunted and exterminated the Moa, 

 and there are even natives who declare that their fathers have seen the Moa 

 and eaten its fiesh. If such assertions could be proved, our researches would 

 have been much simplified. It will therefore be my duty to examine the data 

 upon which such statements rest, and to bring in my turn what I consider 



