a 
MOAS AND MOA HUNTERS. 317 
in previous works; and in the paper before us he refers to it 
only in passing. Leaving that aside, he is completely in accord 
with Dr. von Haast as to the existence of some archaic race of 
men in these islands distinct from and anterior to the Maoris. 
But the main point of the controversy is not the origin and 
nature of these men, but the question whether or not they 
exterminated the moas: that is, whether the moas ceased to 
exist so long ago that the Maoris never saw them, or whether 
they continued to live until, say, less than a century ago. On 
this point we need not refer to the first of the propositions 
quoted above, as the question is not of the beginning, but of the 
end of the moas; and the last two propositions, involving 
matters practically abandoned by Dr. von Haast, may also be 
discarded. M. de Quatrefages devotes some pages to the 
discussion of the second and third propositions, which we may 
again divide as follows (neglecting the “ autochthonism ”) :— 
I. The moa-hunters killed also a species of wild dog, but had 
no tame dogs. 
2. They were not cannibals. 
3. There remain no Maori traditions of any value as to the 
nature, or the destruction, of the moas. 
To these M. de Quatrefages adds another point discussed in the 
papers of Dr. von Haast—namely, a distinction between the 
moa-hunters and a subsequent race of shell-fish eaters. Lastly, 
he refers to the discoveries made in late years of portions of 
moa-bones still covered by flesh and skin, not in the least degree 
fossilised. 
The questions, whether the moa-hunters killed and ate a 
wild dog, and whether they also ate shell-fish, turn upon the 
same point—namely, the absence from their “ kitchen-middens” 
of certain relics.. In the first case, Dr. von Haast affirms that 
no moa-bones have been discovered gnawed by dogs—a clear 
proof, he says, that there were then no tame dogs to gnaw them. 
In the second case, he declares that there is a marked distinction 
between the strata containing moa-bones and no shells, and 
those overlying them containing shells and no moa-bones. M. 
de Quatrefages combats the first point by arguing—first, that in 
Dr. von Haast’s earlier papers he had distinctly referred toa 
dog domesticated by these primitive men, its bones being found 
in their ovens, evidently having been devoured “ either when its 
owner was short of provisions, or, perhaps, when killed by the 
moas.” He at the same time seemed doubtful whether, after 
all, these were not the bones of a wild dog; and this last opinion 
was the one which he finally adopted. But M. de Quatrefages 
points out very truly that in such a case dog-bones ought to 
have been found at some time or another in scattered positions, 
like those of its contemporaries, the moas; whereas, in fact, none 
have ever been so found, and, on the contrary, the ovens, or 
“kitchen-middens” are full of them. It is, in fact, scarcely an 
evidence of the feral nature of an animal that its bones should 
always be found in abundance round the habitations of man, and 
