﻿414 Proceedings. 



while searcliing for guano, wLicli was found in considei'able quantities in 

 caves and hollows of rocks in the Dunstan District. This guano M^as also 

 found on - the Old Man Range ; and at the Leaning E,ock, and was \ised by 

 the people of Bendigo Gully and Cromwell for manuring their gardens. It 

 must have been deposited by some bird. There were now no birds existing 

 there in numbers sufficient or likely to produce such deposits. The guano was 

 pure, and not nearly so strong as Peruvian guano. It is, however, too 

 strong for plants if applied in too great quantities. Some few years ago a 

 letter had appeared in the " Dunstan Times " from a miner, who stated that 

 he had seen some large bird walking, in the dusk of the evening, along the 

 crest of a hill somewhere beyond the Nevis, and that it was going very fast. 

 He mentioned the fact because Dr. Hector had stated the possibility of the Moa 

 having existed at a very recent period in some of the open birch forests on 

 the West Coast. It was also strange that the portion of the .neck had been 

 found on the same range on which the writer to the newspaper had said he 

 had seen the bird walking. 



The Chairman said, in reference to this, that he remembered the writer 

 had also stated that he had seen the foot-prints of the bird, and described them 

 as those of a large bird, with a hind toe, which the Moa did not possess. If 

 the writer, therefore, meant it to be understood that he had seen a Moa, he 

 was convicted out of his own mouth. 



Mr. A. Bathgate said that he was at Mr. Murison's station a day or two 

 after the bones obtained there were found. He inspected the surface of the 

 ground there, and found it covered with small chips of chert and fragments of 

 Moa egg-shells, which were lying exposed. In talking the matter over, he, and 

 the other gentlemen present, at first conjectured that the bones might have been 

 sufficiently green to have been used as fuel, as some were a good deal burnt, a 

 fact which lent a colour to the supposition. But on second consideration they 

 recollected that there were no large bones, such as those of the leg, to be seen in 

 the oven which he saw opened, but only smaller bones. A number of the larger 

 bones were found in a gully about 300 yards away, and from this they con- 

 cluded that the Moa-hunters had left the legs and other comparatively flesh less 

 parts there, and had only carried the parts they liked best as food to the oven. 

 There must have been a great number of the birds in that district, as on the other 

 side of the Maniototo Plain, distant about eight or ten miles in a direct line, a 

 miner at work in that part told him that every time he washed up he used to 

 get numbers of pieces of egg-shells, some of which he gave him, and the 

 largest of which was fully a,n inch square. Mr. Bathgate laid on the table 

 some of the tracheal rings of the Moa, which he found in the oven opened at 

 Mr. Murison's station, and some specimens of the egg-shells which he pi-ocured 

 from the miner referred to. 



