366 The American Naturalist. [May, 



thing the same with those bones which still have dried skin 

 and ligaments attached. They are so fresh that, unless the 

 birds lived a few years ago, they must have been preserved 

 under specially favorable conditions; and there are reasons 

 for thinking that the small district of Central Otago, in which 

 alone these remains have been found, is one specially favora- 

 ble for preserving animal remains. If this be so we cannot 

 say for how many years they may have been preserved, perhaps 

 for centuries, and as we have every reason to believe, upon the 

 authority of the Rev. J. W. Stack, that the ancestors of the 

 Ngai Tahu, who have inhabited the South Island for the last 

 200 or 250 years, never had any personal knowledge of the 

 birds, we must allow that the Moa lias been extinct for at least 

 that time. On the other hand, it is quite certain that the Moa 

 was exterminated by the Maoris, and the Maoris are not sup- 

 posed to have inhabited the South Island for more than 500 

 years, so that the time of extinction must fall between these 

 dates. It seems improbable thai the Ngatimamoe, the last 

 remnant of whom inhabited the West Coast sounds a few years 

 ago, were Moa hunters. The moa hunters of the South Island 

 were not cannibals, and as Te-rapu-wai and Waitaha, the 

 tribes who preceded the Ngatimamoe, are said to have been 

 peaceful and to have " covered the land like ants, " it lends 

 support to the Maori tradition that it was they who extermin- 

 ated the Moa and made the shell heaps on the beach. If 

 this be so the Moas were exterminated in the South Island 

 about 300 or 400 years ago ; that is, about a hundred years later 

 than in the North Island.— New Zealand Journal. 



