﻿116 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



hanging rocks, sheltered only from south- west storms, as if an accumulation by a 

 storm-stayed party of natives. With these were also associated moa bones, and 

 other reoTiains. Again, on the top of the Carrick mountains, which are in the 

 same district, but at an altitude of 5,000 feet above the sea, the same gentleman 

 discovered a gully, in which were numerous heaps of bones, and along with them 

 native implements of stone, among which was a well-finished cleaver of blue 

 slate, PI. VII. fig. 5, and also a coarsely-made hornstone cleaver, the latter of a 

 material that must have been brought from a very great distance. 



Still clearer evidence that in very recent times the natives travelled through 

 the interior, probably following the Moa as a means of subsistence, like natives 

 in the countries where lai-ge game abounds, was obtained in 1865-6, by Messrs. 

 J. and W. Murison. At the Maniototo plains bones of several species of 

 Dinornis, Aptornis, Apteryx, large Rails, Stringops, and other birds are exceed- 

 ingly abundant in the alluvium of a particular stream, so much so that they 

 are turned up by the plough with facility. Attention was arrested by the 

 occurrence on the high ground terrace which bounds the valley of this stream, 

 of circular heaps composed of flakes and chips of chert of a description that 

 occurs only in large blocks along the base of the mountains at about a mile 

 distant. This chert is a very peculiar rock, being a " cemented water 

 quartz," or sandy gravel converted into a hard quartzite, by infiltration of 

 silicious matter. The resemblance of the flakes to those they had seen described 

 as found in the ancient kitchen- middens, and a desire to account for the great 

 profusion of moa bones on a lower terrace shelf nearer the margin of the 

 stream, led the Messrs. Murison to exjjlore the ground carefully, and by 

 excavating in likely spots they found a series of circular pits partly lined with 

 stones, and containing, intermixed with charcoal, abundance of moa bones and 

 egg-shells, together with bones of the dog, the egg-shells being in such quantities 

 that they consider that hundreds of eggs must have been cooked in each hole. 

 Along with these were stone implements of various kinds (reduced to one- 

 third natural size in PI. YII., figs. 1 to 4), and of several other varieties 

 of rock besides the chert which lies on the surface. The form and contents 

 of these cooking ovens correspond exactly with those described by Mantell 

 in 1847, as occurring on the sea coast ; and among the stone implements 

 which Mantell found in them, he remembers some to have been of the same 

 chert which occurs in situ at this locality, fifty miles in the interior. The 

 greater nuniber of these chert specimens found on the coast are with the rest 

 of the collection in the British Museum. There is another circumstance which 

 incidentally supports the view that while the Moas still existed in great 

 numbers, the country was open and regularly traversed by the natives engaged 

 in hunting. Near the old Maori ovens on the coast, Mantell discovered a very 

 curious dish made of steatite, a mineral occurring in New Zealand only on the 



