﻿Hector. — On Recent Moa Remains. 117 



West Coast, rudely carved on the back in the Maori fashion, and measuring twelve 

 by eight inches and very shallo-w. The natives at the time recognised this dish, 

 by tradition, and said there were two of them. It is very remarkable that 

 since then the fellow dish has- been discovered by some gold-diggers in the 

 Manuherikia plain, and was used on a hotel counter at the Dunstan township 

 as a matchbox, till it was sent to England, and, as I am informed, placed in a 

 public museum in Liverpool. 



The manner in which the Maoris use their cooking ovens suggested to me 

 an explanation of the mode in which these flakes of chert came to be found in. 

 such profusion, while only a few of them show any sign of having been trimmed 

 in order to fit them for implements. The native method of cooking is to heat 

 the hardest stones procurable in the fire, and then placing the food to be cooked 

 on top, to cover the whole with green leaves and earth, and through an opening 

 pour in water, which, coming in contact with the hot stones^ causes the forma- 

 tion of steam by which the food is cooked. If masses of the white chert be 

 heated and quenched with water in this manner, the result is the foi*mation of 

 flakes of every variety of shape with sharp-cutting edges. It is natural to 

 suppose that when one of these flakes was found to be of a shape convenient 

 for a particular purpose, such as a knife, cleaver, or spear-head, it was trimmed 

 and dressed somewhat in the manner of a gun-flint when the edge became 

 defective, rather than cast away, and favourite forms might be preserved and 

 carried even as far as the coast. 



This suggested explanation of how a race, advanced probably far beyond 

 the so-called period of such rude implements, might yet find it convenient to 

 manufacture and use them, is supported by the circumstance that along with 

 the trimmed chert flakes the Messrs. Muvison found polished adzes of aphanite, 

 and even jade, which shows that the hunting natives had, in addition to the 

 flake knives, the same implements as those which are so common among the 

 natives at the present day, though their use is now superseded by iron. 



In the ovens on the coast, besides flakes and rough knives of chert and 

 flint, are found flake knives of obsidian, a rock which only occurs in the 

 volcanic district of the North Island, and also adzes and stone axes of every 

 degree of finish and variety of material. Although there is no positive evidence 

 in the latter case that more highly finished implements were in lise by a 

 people co-temporaneous with the Moa, whose remains, collected by human 

 agency, are so abundant in the same place, nevertheless the fact of a similar 

 association occurring far in the interior, affords strong presumptive evidence on 

 this point, as the finely finished implements must have been carried inland, 

 and to the same spots where the moa remains occur, to be used at native feasts, 

 of which these bones are the only other existing evidences. 



So far I have been dealing with evidence gathered in the South Island of 



P 



