﻿Stack. — Notes on " Moas and Moa Hunters.'^ 109 



Coast of the North Island, where the last of the Moas hid itself. But no 

 one I ever met had seen them. Those who described them had only heard 

 of them from others. It is quite possible that moa feathers may have been 

 found and used as ornaments, but it is not necessary to believe they were so to 

 account for the description the Maoris give of them. The feathers of the 

 Cassowary are used as ornaments in the islands where they exist, and probably 

 the ancestors of the Maori brought some away with them. These, from their 

 rareness, would be highly prized and carefully preserved, and when all recol- 

 lection of the Hawaikian Moa had faded away, would be thought to belong to 

 that Moa of which remains were everywhere visible. In the same way, we 

 may account for the saying regarding the toughness of the Moa's flesh, which 

 could only be thoroughly cooked with the twigs of the koromiko, by supposing 

 that it was the flesh of the Hawaikian Moa, and not of the Dinoi^nis that was 

 meant. But unless the Maoris saw the Dinornis alive, how did they know 

 that the bones they found strewing the earth were the bones of a bird 1 The 

 largest form of land-animal life with which they were familiar on their arrival 

 here was that of a bird which they called a Moa. Probably they found many 

 skeletons of the Dinornis lying in such positions as clearly to indicate its form 

 when alive. Being careful observers of nature, they would note the resemblance 

 between the skeletons they found here and the skeletons of the Moa with which 

 they were acquainted in the islands, and would at once conclude that they were 

 identical, and call them by the same name. Against the theory of the antiqiiity 

 of moa remains, it is urged that the bones which were everywhere found in 

 good preservation twenty years ago, have entirely disappeared since then. 

 How, it is asked, coiild those bones have remained in exposed situations for 

 hundreds of years before the advent of Europeans, when so short a period has 

 sufiiced, since their arrival, to destroy all traces of them in localities where they 

 were so plentiful? I think the efibrts of the Maoris to preserve, and the 

 efforts of the Europeans to destroy, the rank vegetation of the country, account 

 for the preservation in one case, and the subsequent destruction in the other, 

 of the moa remains. Ever since the peopling of these islands by Maoris, the 

 natural vegetation has been protected as far as possible from destruction. 

 The grass of the Canterbury plains afforded cover for the Kiore, native rat, 

 which was caught in immense numbers, being highly esteemed for food. If 

 the Maoris have inhabited these islands for five hundred years, then during 

 that period they preserved, as far as possible, the vegetation of the plains, the 

 decaying leaves of which would each year add to the thick covering overlying 

 the moa i-emains, and which, being impervious to wet, woiild preserve them 

 from the destructive action of the atmosphere. On the occupation of the 

 country by Europeans, the vegetation was burnt, the covering removed, and 

 the bones exposed ; and successive fires, coupled with atmospheric inflixeuccs, 



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