﻿7 6 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



ignorant of anybliing concerning the Moa, save tlie fabulous stories already- 

 referred to. If such an animal ever existed within the time of the present 

 race of New Zealanders, surely to a people possessing no quadruped, and but 

 very scancily supplied with both animal and vegetable food, the chase and 

 capture of such a creature would not only be a grand achievement, but one 

 also, from its importance, not likely ever to be forgotten ; seeing, too, that many 

 things of comparatively minor importance are by them handed down from 

 father to son in continued succession from the very night of history. Even 

 fishes, birds, and plants (anciently sought after with avidity as articles of food, 

 are now, if not altogether, very nearly extinct), although never having been 

 seen by either the passing or the rising generation of aborigines, ax-e, notwith- 

 standing, both in habit and uses, well known to them from the descriptive 

 accounts repeatedly recited in their hearing by the old men of the villages." 

 And again, further on — " In fact, unless we suppose this 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, like the Dodo, 

 blotted out of the list of the feathered race ? From the bones of about thirty 

 birds found at Tauranga in a very short time, and with very little labour, we 

 can but infer that it once lived in considerable numbers ; and from 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 could 

 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 or cotemporaneous 

 to the peopling of these islands by the presentrace of New Zealanders." In 

 his masterly essay " On the Maori Races of New Zealand," Mr. Colenso- 

 briefly alludes to the same subject, affirming that he has not changed his 

 opinion concerning the age of the Dinornis, and that he has never been able 

 to obtain any reliable traditions concerning it. 



The Rev. James W. Stack, who has also made careful inquiries in both 

 islands, has come to the conclusion, after sifting the so-called traditions of the 

 aborigines, that beyond the fact that the Moa was a bird, and that its feathers 

 resembled those of the Kiwi or Apteri/x, the Maoris do not possess any informa- 

 tion about it. They, moreover, attribute its extinction to a great fire, called 

 the fire of Tamatea, which they assei-t swept over the Canterbury Plains about 

 500 years ago, the smouldering remains of which, as they think, may still be 

 seen in the goi'ge of the Rakaia. The so-called smouldering remains are, how- 

 ever, seams of brown coal in combustion, and this fact alone proves the 



