﻿Wellington PJdlosojjhical Society. 379 



sioii in an alluvial fiat. On the first or upper floor wei'e found traces of a fire 

 and charred bones. On the second, by scraping away the loose dust to the 

 depth of two feet, leg bones, ribs, vertebrae, a pelvis, toe bones, tracheal rings, 

 and pieces of skin and muscle were found. At the lowest level were found 

 fragments of egg-shell and the bones of a bird with a keeled sterniim. Dr. 

 Thomson has obtained bones of at least eight birds, and a perfect skull with 

 lower jaw and trachea attached, and a femur, with well preserved muscular 

 tissue, was also obtained at the spot Avhere the neck was formei'ly found. The 

 position of the cave is ojDposite Alexandra, at the foot of the Obelisk ranges. 

 From another locality in the same district Dr. Thomson also sent twenty 

 feathers of the Moa that were obtained by a digger 18 feet below the surface 

 in recent alluvium. 



6. ''On some Moa Feathers," by Captain F. W. Hutton, F.G.S. (See 

 Transactions, p. 172.) The author said that, while these feathers had the 

 form peculiar to Struthious birds, they were quite different to those of any 

 known species, and that they showed that the bird to which they belonged was 

 allied more to the American Rhea than to any of the Struthious birds of the 

 old world. 



In the course of the discussion which followed, the President, and also the 

 Hon. Mr. Mantell, alluded to the injustice that had been done to the late 

 Mi\ Rule, of Nelson, who took the first Moa bone to Professor Owen, and who 

 had been represented in some quarters as being an illiterate seaman, ignorant of 

 such matters, whereas he was an educated medical man, who was perfectly 

 aware that the bone was that of a bird when he took it to Ensfland. 



Ninth Meeting. 2Zth Novemher, 1871. 



James Hector, M.D., F.P.S., in the chair. 



The chairman announced several valuable presentations to the Museum 

 and library — including the " Transactions of the Zoological Society " of 

 London, Professor Owen's latest work on the Moa ; ferns, etc., from the island 

 of St. Paul, presented by an ofiicer of H.M.S. 'Blanche,' who had obtained 

 them while on the island after the wreck of H.M.S, ' Meg£ei*a,' and some Seal 

 skulls brought by the officers of H.M.S. ' Blanche,' from the Auckland Islands. 



Dr. Hector reported the successful introduction for the first time of English 

 Trout into two streams of the North Island — the Kaiwarrawarra and the 

 Hutt. He also made some remarks on the enormous quantity of fish that was 

 cast up on the sea coast by the late S.E. gale. Among them wore hardly any 

 of the kinds usually obtained by the fishermen. Of eleven species collected, 



