﻿118 Transactions. — lliscellaneoios. 



the recent co-existence of Man and the Moa, but in the North Ishmd there is no 

 lack of similar proofs. During the summer of 1866 His Excellency Sir George 

 Grey made a fine collection at "Waingongoro, on the "West Coast of this island, 

 being the same locality in which Mantell gathered the magnificent series of bones 

 which he forwarded to Europe in 1847. At this place, along with the bones 

 of the Moa and other extinct bii-ds, were found those of dogs, seals, and many 

 species of birds that are common at . the present day, such as the Albatross, 

 Penguin, Nestor, Porphyrio, and notably the Notornis, a gigantic Rail, which, 

 till a comparatively recent date, was supposed to be, like the Moa, extinct, and 

 of which as yet only two living examples have been obtained. Associated 

 with these remains Sir George Grey obtained artificially-formed stone flakes of 

 a very peculiar kind, being chips from rolled boulders of haixl crystalline 

 sandstone, produced by a single blow — ^j^jrobably when the stone was heated 

 and quenched in water. (PI. YIL, fig. 6, also similar flakes found by 

 Dr. Haast, PI. lY.) The stones from which these chips were obtained had 

 evidently been used in the first instance for cooking — as ancient umus or 

 cooking ovens are chiefly formed of them ; and, indeed, in many localities in 

 sandy tracts on the West Coast where stones are rare, the identical stones that 

 in former days were used for cooking Moas ai'e still in use by the natives of 

 the district for cooking pigs and shell-fish. Here, again, we find that the same 

 necessity and circumstance that suggested the use of the chert flakes in the 

 south, apparently gave oi'igin to a similar adaptation of the chips from the 

 sandstone boulders. It is of some interest to find that native tradition points 

 to Waingongoro as the spot where the first Maoii immigi'ants originally settled, 

 and there appears to be nothing in the abundant traces which they have left 

 of the great feasts which we must refer to this period that would indicate any 

 difference in their domestic habits from those of the Maoris now existing, 

 and who no doubt are their direct descendants. What has been advanced 

 affords evidence that the Moas, although belonging probably to a race 

 that was expiring from natural causes, were finally exterminated through 

 human agency ; and on this subject Mr. W. D. Murison has suggested how 

 infallibly the wholesale consumption of the eggs, which were evidently highly 

 prized as an article of food, must have led to their rapid extinction, without it 

 being necessary that the birds themselves should be actually destroyed. That 

 wide-spreading fires contributed in some instances to the destruction of these 

 wingless birds, is rendered probable from the occurrence of little heaps of 

 bones in spots where flocks of them would be overtaken when fleeing before 

 the destroying element. At the south-west extremity of a triangular plain by 

 the side of the Wakatipu Lake, in 1862, I counted thirty-seven of such distinct 

 skeleton heaps, where the steep rocky slope of the mountains, covered with 

 fallen blocks and tangled shrubs, meets the hike, and would therefore stop 



