﻿Hector.— tOw Recent Moa Remains. 115 



found among the soft parts whicli have been preserved. The integument was 

 easily removed on dividing the few threads of dried tissue by which it was 

 attached. The shrivelled up soft parts thus displayed could not be clearly 

 distinguished, but may be guessed as follows : — 1st. A strong band of 

 ligamentous tissue, connecting the spinous processes. 2nd. Intervertebral 

 muscles and ligaments. 3rd. A sheath diverging from the lower part of the 

 spine. The only bone present besides the verteh'ce was attached to this 

 sheath by its tip, the other extremity having been articulated to the first 

 dorsal, as shown in the accompanying drawing, PL V. fig. d. Fig. a is the 

 side view, showing the integument. Fig. h is the dorsal aspect, showing the 

 portions of the vertehrce, which are- covered and vincovered. Fig. c is a view 

 of the soft parts after the removal of the skin. 



The above interesting discoveries render it probable that the inland district of 

 Otago, at a time when its grassy plains and rolling hills were covered with a 

 dense scrubby vegetation or a light forest growth, was where the giant wing- 

 less birds of New Zealand lingered to latest times. It is impossible to convey 

 an idea of the profusion of bones which, only a few years ago, were found in 

 this district, scattered on the surface of the ground, or buried in the alluvial 

 soil in the neighbourhood of streams and rivers. At the present time this 

 area of country is particularly arid as compared with the prevalent character 

 of New Zealand. It is perfectly treeless — nothing but the smallest-sized 

 shrubs being found within a distance of sixty or seventy miles. The surface 

 features comprise round-backed ranges of hills of schistoze rock with swamps 

 on the top, deeply cut by ravines that open out on basin-shaped plains formed 

 of alluvial deposits that have been everywhei-e moulded into beautifully regular 

 terraces, to an altitude of 1,700 feet above the sea-level. That the mountain 

 slopes were at one time covered with forest, the stumps and prostrate trunks 

 of large trees, and the mounds and pits on the surface of the ground which 

 mark old forest land, abundantly testify, although it is probable that the 

 intervening plains have never supported more than a dense thicket of shrubs, 

 or were partly occupied by swamps. The greatest number of moa bones were 

 found where rivers deboiich on the plains — and that at a comparatively late 

 period these plains were the hunting-grounds of the aborigines, can be proved 

 almost incontestably. Under some overhanging rocks in the neighbourhood of 

 the Clutha river, at a place named by the first explorers " Moa Flat," from the 

 abundance of bones which lay strewn on the sixrface, rude stone flakes of a kind 

 of stone not occurring in that district, were fou.nd by me in 1862 associated with 

 heaps of moa bones. Forty miles further in the interior, and at the same place 

 where the Moa's neck was recently obtained, Captaia Fraser, in 1864, disco- 

 vered what he described to me as a manufactory for such flakes and knives of 

 chert as could be used as rough cutting instruments, in a cave formed by over- 



