of Edinburgh, Session 1873 - 74 . 237 
extinct in the northern island for a considerable time before it was 
exterminated on the opposite side of Cook’s Straits (which is a matter 
still quite open to doubt), they might be merely the tracks of indi- 
viduals, contemporary with that, the egg of which was found in the 
grave of the Hurunui chieftain, placed there to serve him as pro- 
vision on his way to happier hunting grounds, and would thus lose 
much of the interest which appertains to them as very ancient 
memorials. 
The present specimens were obtained by the writer on a late 
visit to the district of Poverty Pay. 
The slabs were cut out of a bed of rock, crossing a small affluent 
which falls into the Turanganui river, near its mouth, and the foot- 
prints, first observed by the ferryman, and pointed out to Arch- 
deacon Williams, are now washed by every tide. The deposit can 
be traced across the estuary to a point under the high land, on the 
northern shore of the bay, where similar impressions are to be seen. 
It has been suggested that this bed is but a portion left of the 
ancient plateau composed of strata known to local geologists as the 
Hawke’s Bay series, but no such antiquity can be assigned to it, 
having been formed from the detritus of the cliffs (which rival in 
whiteness the chalk walls of the English channel) swept into this 
spot by a current which eddied round under the precipitous coast, 
at a time when the shallow bay extended further inland, but when 
otherwise the configuration of the land was much the same as it 
is now. 
From the number of the footprints crossing and recrossing each 
other, and the proximity of those of individuals, it seems that these 
birds were in the habit of resorting to the sea-shore to feed upon 
the small fish and mollusks left by the receding tide, as the Kheas 
of South America do at the present day. 
The strata among which the impressions occur appear to be the 
result partly of the accumulation of blown sand, partly of subaqueous 
deposit during a period of gradual submergence. 
At the mouth of the Hutt River, and along the shore of Welling- 
ton harbour, during the earthquakes of 1855, the land rose nine 
feet, and a corresponding depression took place of the valley, it is 
stated, in which the town of Blenheim is situated on the southern 
shore of Cook’s Straits. 
