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probably disappeared from the surface of the earth but a few genera- 
tions ago. 1 It is even rumoured in the colony and is certainly 
not utterly impossible , that in unaccessible solitudes there might 
still be some few living stragglers of that giant-family “the last 
of the Mohicans”. 2 However, I am not inclined to believe the 
stories of the natives, that Heretaunga in the vicinity of Ahuriri 
on the East Coast of North Island or Whakapunake on Poverty 
Bay is the haunt of the last living Moas; and I likewise discredit 
the assertions of American sailors and seal-hunters , who pretend 
to have seen monster-birds of 14 or 16 and even of 20 feet in height 
© 
stalking to and fro on Cloudy Bay and on the inhospitable south- 
western shores of South Island. And certainly it is a remarkable 
fact, that in those extensive, wholly uninhabited regions of the 
Southern Alps , which within the last years have been explored, no 
reliable traces 3 could be found anywhere. It is therefore my opi- 
nion, that all the larger species are wholly extinct, and that the 
above mentioned Roa-roa (Apteryx maxima) is probably the largest 
living representative of the former giant-family. 
To the question about the causes of the dying out of those 
1 Berthold Seemann (“Viti” p. 383) says: ‘■Toa" is the Fijian Turin of the word 
^oa 1 , applied to domestic fowls, and by the Maoris to the most gigantic extinct 
birds ( Dinornis ) disentombed in New Zealand. The Polynesian term for birds that 
fly about freely in the air is Manu or Manumanu; and the fact that the New Zea- 
landers did not choose one of these, but the one implying domesticity and want of 
free locomotion in the air, would seem a proof that the New Zealand Moas were 
actually seen alive by the Maoris about their premises, as stated in their traditions, 
and have only become extinct in comparatively recent times. 
2 Of Nolornis Mantdli , since the specimen caught in 1850 on Dusky Bay, 
South Island, not the slightest trace has been found anywhere. 
3 What the Nelson Examiner of January 12, 1861, relates of enormous tracks 
in the mountains on Blind Bay, appears to my judgment a joke rather than a serious 
assertion: “In June, while Messrs. Brunner and Maling, of the Survey Office, were 
surveying on the ranges between Eiwaka and Takaka, they observed one morning 
the footprints of what appeared to be a very large bird, whose track, however, 
was lost among the scrub and rocks. The foot-prints were 14 inches in length, 
with a spread of 11 inches at the points of the three toes. Similar foot-prints were 
seen on a subsequent morning, and as the country is full of limestone-caves, it is 
thought that a solitary Moa may yet be in existence. But no other trace of this 
rara avis has as yet been discovered.” 
