﻿MuRisoN. — Notes on Moa Remains. 121 



traditions among the Maoris concerning the Moa, and considers it inconceivable 

 that natives who have traditions going back several hundred years, should 

 have no account of the extinction of their principal means of existence ; and 

 he is of opinion that overwhelming evidence can be brought to show that 

 the forefathers of the Maoris not only neither hunted nor exterminated the 

 Moa, but that they knew nothing about it. He addresses himself, in the first 

 place, to the geological evidence which can be brought to bear to determine the 

 age of the Moa. He confesses he has never observed tlie bones exposed on 

 the surface of the ground, in the same way as he has been informed they 

 frequently occur in Otago. He refers, also, to the small heaps of crop stones 

 that are often met with in the latter province, and he admits that the 

 occurrence of these, together with bones, on the surface of the ground is 

 difficult to account for, when the absence of native traditions concerning the 

 bird is borne in mind. He refers to the careful researches of Colenso and 

 Stack, and he quotes the opinion of the former-, who holds that the period of 

 time in which most probably the Moa existed was certainly either antecedent 

 or coetaneous to the peoi)ling of these islands by the present race of JSTew 

 Zealanders. He alludes, also, to the discoveries of Mr. Mantell, and expresses 

 a belief that he was the first to draw the attention of scientific men to the 

 fact that man had been co-temporaneous with the Dinornis. What may be 

 called the second part of his adch-ess is taken up chiefly with an account of his 

 investigations of old kitchen-middens and cooking places on the banks of the 

 Little Rakaia. He describes at great length the construction of the former, 

 and the character of the implements and bones he dug up. It is not my 

 intention, however, to follow Dr. Haasfc in the interesting investigations he 

 made. I have indicated some of the leading points of his exhaustive address, 

 and I must pass on to my own observations. At the foot of Roughbridge, 

 where the Puke-toi-toi creek enters the Maniototo plain, I assisted in forming 

 a station some ten years ago ; and although I had had occasion to obsei've 

 near the coast, and in other parts of the interior, the bones of the Moa, I was 

 at once struck with the frequency of their occurrence at this place, as well as 

 with the excellent state of preservation in which they were found. Scarcely 

 a hole could be dug without some of those remains being exposed ; and when 

 the land came to be cultivated, bones and fragments of egg-shells in great 

 number were laid bare by the plough. The bones most frequently picked up 

 under these conditions were those of the feet belonging to the larger species 

 of the Dinornis, and the femur a,nd Jibia of the A2ytornis — a bird which stood 

 some three feet high, whose remains are rarely met with in other localities. 

 It was not till 1865, howevei', that any discovery of cooking places was made. 

 These were first observed by my brother, when, in riding along the banks of 

 the creek, he noticed a chain of hollows which he conjectured were Maori ovens 



