﻿Haast. — Moas and Moa Hunters. 91 



the ai'rival of the Europeans, and were consequently more reliable than those 

 of the present Maori generation. When writing that address I was well 

 aware that Mr. Mantell had delivered, only a few j^ears ago, a lecture on the 

 Moa, but it had entirely escajDed ray memory that an extract of this lecture 

 had been printed in the first volume of the Py-oceedinys of the New Zealand 

 Institute. However, as I remembered having seen somewhere a notice of it, 

 I searched amongst some cuttings from Wellington newsjaapers which I kept 

 by me, but in vain. Consequently I had to fall back on Dr. Mantell's works, 

 containing, as far as I knew, the most authentic information of the views and 

 statements of his son. Dr. Hector, on his late visit to Christchurch, pointed 

 out where I could find the desired information. In reading the interesting 

 extract of that lecture in the first volume of the Proceedings of the New 

 Zealand Institute, it became apparent to me that since the publication of Dr. 

 Mantell's works the Hon. W. Mantell had somewhat modified his former 

 views, because, when speaking of the extermination of the Moa, he is repoi^ted 

 to have expressed himself to the following efiect :— " That this must have 

 taken place withbi a short period after the appearance of man, adducing the 

 only slight and obscure allusions in the most ancient Maori traditions to their 

 existence as proof of this." It appears also that Mr. Mantell is inclined now 

 to believe that the Moa owed its destruction to a different race, and prior to 

 the arrival of the Maori race in New Zealand, a conclusion at which I also 

 arrived by comparing the tools of the moa-hunters at the Rakaia "with those 

 of the Maoris. The same gentleman is also reported to have stated that there 

 was evidence that cannibalism prevailed at the time the Moas were used for 

 food, but only in the North Island, confirming my observations made at the 

 Rakaia and elsewhere, that the moa-hunters in this island were not anthro- 

 pophagi. However, I still doubt very much whether the inhabitants of the 

 North Island, in the same era, were cannibals, as I believe that the same 

 favourable localities, formerly selected by the moa-hunters, were also used by 

 the Maoris as camping grounds, by which the mixture of the kitchen-middens 

 of both races has been produced. Even were we to admit that the inhabitants 

 of each island had belonged to a different race, or that they had not had com- 

 munication with each other, so that different habits of vital importance had 

 become formed in each of them, the discovery of obsidian in the kitchen- 

 middens of this island clearly proves that such arguments would be fallacious. 

 The pieces of obsidian being of such frequent occurrence, we are obliged to 

 assume that regular communication existed between both islands, and it is 

 difficult to conceive that, under these circumstances, the one island should 

 have been inhabited by cannibals and not the other. Nor could different 

 races have inhabited the two islands during the extermination of the Moa, 

 and the southei-n race have gone to the North Island to obtain the much 



