History of the Moas. 



) to stand thus. 

 » of places in wfc 



slight and obscure, -enrrallv. indeed. ti.buUis. There is also 

 one very ancient poem culled " The Lament of Ikaheivngatu. n 

 in which the pharse " Ka ngaroi te Dgaro a tea Moa " th»-t a< 

 tie 1 Moa is lost) occur-, which certainly shows that the bird was 

 not in existence when the poem was composed. The so-called 

 traditions of its habits appear to be, in large part at least, late 

 deductions from these words and phrases, and we must eon- 

 conclude that in the North Island, the Moa was exterminated 

 by the Maoris soon after their arrival in New Zealand ; that is 

 not less than 400 or 500 years ago. 



In the South Island there are no names of places contain- 

 ing the word Moa, but here remains have been found — either 

 skeletons lying on the surface or bones with skin and liga- 

 ments still attached — which give the impression that the birds 

 were living here not more than ten or twelve years ago. Now 

 the bones which are said to have strewn the surface so abun- 

 dantly when the first settlers came, had all disappeared in fif- 

 teen years ; so it is plain that either some change in the sur- 

 rounding conditions cause the bones to decay, or that none of 

 the bones which were so abundant in 1861, were more than 

 fifteen years old. But as we cannot believe that Moas were 

 abundant in Otago in 1846, we must fall back on the opinion 

 that the tires lighted by the early settlers to clear the scrub so 

 altered the conditions under which the bones had been pre- 

 served that they soon decayed, in which case we cannot say 

 how long the bones may have been lying there. It is some- 



