Birds. 



8559 



face; and it is said that they found foot-marks which they helieve to have been made 

 by some large bird very recently. I see no reason to believe that the moa does not 

 exist, and I think the probability is that it does. The Middle Island was never very 

 thickly peopled, and it is nearly thirty years since it was almost depopulated by 

 Te Eanperaha's tribe. The natives were confined to the eastern side of the island, 

 and never penetrated to the mountains on the east coast. Their superstitions mili- 

 tated against it. They believed that a race of wild men inhabited the mountains, 

 which were also infested by the dreaded taniwa, a great lizard which ate men. They 

 also had a tradition that the moa still lived in the ranges. Since the Europeans have 

 inhabited New Zealand no lizards have been seen larger than about eighteen inches, 

 and certainly no wild men have been met with by the explorers; so that the super- 

 stitiou of the natives only proves their ignorance. The bones discovered during the 

 last twenty years prove that the moa lived at no very distant day. Why should he be 

 extinct ? We know of no enemy likely to exterminate him ; and if the untrodden 

 wastes of the Middle Island furnished him with food at a period not distant enough 

 to fossilize his bones, we know of no change which has altered the condition of the 

 islands on that score up to the present day. There are birds which could not so 

 easily preserve their existence, and which have not as yet become extinct. The kiwi- 

 kiwi (apteryx) for instance, and the kaka-po (night parrot), which is also wingless. 

 Both these birds are small, and have numerous enemies, especially native dogs, which 

 would be powerless against the moa. It is, therefore, by no means impossible — 

 I even think it probable — that Professor Owen may yet be gratified by a recent spe- 

 cimen of this gigantic bird. — Correspondent of 1 Times' Neivspaper. 



Reported Discovery of the Moa. — In your impression of this morning I see, in your 

 Australian intelligence, that a party of explorers, travelling to the west coast of New 

 Zealand, have found traces of the above-named bird, which lead them to believe that 

 the bird is not, as is commonly supposed, extinct. Your correspondent also adds 

 that he is not aware of any enemy capable of having exterminated it. Now, 

 in New Zealand, especially in that dense bush which covers the greater part of 

 the west coast of the Middle Island, bush fires (supposed to be occasioned by 

 the friction of the boughs of trees, which grow very close to each other) are 

 constantly occurring, and the commonly received opinion in New Zealand is that 

 by these fires the moa has been burnt out. In fact, to a certain extent the old 

 Maori legends bear this out. They say that before the depopulation of the 

 Middle Island by Te Ranperaha and Co., the whole of the vast extent of country 

 known as the Canterbury Plains was bush, and that they burnt it all on account of the 

 misbehaviour of the moa, who, they say, used to carry away their children and devour 

 them. Be this as it may, certain it is that pieces of timber have been found a very- 

 small distance from the surface on the Plains, which bore unraislakeable evidence of 

 having flourished at no very distant date. I may add that all the remains of moas 

 which I have seen in New Zealand bore traces of having been subjected to the action 

 of fire. — Hulton J. Webber ; Tunbridge Wells, April 13. — ' Times ' Newspaper. 



Reported Discovery of the Moa. — As anything connected with the rumoured 

 discovery of this long-supposed extinct bird is interesting, we make no apology for 

 reproducing from another source our previous account of its alleged appearance. The 

 gentleman to whom we are indebted for our former narration had it from the lips of 

 one of the discoverers. We have now an account from another gentleman, who also 

 received it from one of the men ; and it is noticeable, as indicative of their truth, how 



