﻿Ha AST. — Ifoas and Moa Hunters. 105 



remind you that the Maoris v/ent not only eel-fishing, but also rat and wood- 

 hen catching. 



If I am allowed to ofier a simile, I would compare the finding of polished 

 and unpolished stone implements together, with finding some coins of the 

 middle ages near some stone implements and bones of the giant elk in a boggy 

 deposit on the banks of a small gully in Ireland, and we should conclude there- 

 from that they must all have been co-temporaneous, because after the extinction 

 of the giant elk no other means of sustenance could be procured near such a 

 locality. 



However, even supposing that really polished stone implements had been 

 mixed up with the chipped flint Instruments, this would merely prove that of 

 a people possessing a very low standard of civilization, the generality used 

 only very rough and primitive stone implements, but numbered a few 

 favoured persons amongst its members, who were already in possession of fine 

 polished ones, indicating a much higher state of civilization for them than for 

 the great mass of the tribes. 



To believe in such an anomalous state of things would be, to my mind, 

 taking a very strange view. However, this would not prove that the Moa 

 had lived in more recent times, than from the absence of reliable traditions, 

 and from the generally very primitive form of flint implements, we are com- 

 pelled to assume. 



Moreover, I wish to point out that even polished stone implements are of 

 considerable antiquity in New Zealand, as they have been found in such 

 positions that their great age cannot be doiibted. 



In volume IL of the " Journal of the Ethnological Society of London," 

 page 110, etc., I have described two stone implements, a polished stone adze 

 and a sharpening stone, found in Bruce Bay, fifteen feet below the ground, in 

 an undisturbed deposit, over which a forest, consisting of large trees, was 

 growing ; since then I have received another adze made of sandstone, 

 possessing a well polished cutting edge, found at Hunt's Beach, West Coast, 

 eighteen feet below the ground, amongst the roots and stumps of an ancient 

 forest, which last June, during the progress of gold mining operations, was 

 laid bare. 



Plate IV. fig. 1 gives a drawing of this stone implement, now in the Can- 

 terbu.ry Museum, of the considerable age of which there can be no doubt. 



The story of the whaler about the Moa, to which Mr. Murison alludes, is 

 simply a sailor's yarn, with which we have been favoured repeatedly. 



I am sorry I cannot agree with the conclusions of Mr. Murison, but 

 sincerely hope that that gentleman will personally superintend some excavations 

 in the valley in question, and if the discovery of polished and rudely chipped 

 stone implements in co-temporaneous deposits should be confirmed by him, a 

 great step towards solving the question at issue will have been made. 



