196 
But what next? The Maoris had increased to a very numerous 
people, the Moas were exterminated; whence were the natives 
thenceforth to get their animal food ? This question leads us to 
the cause and the origin of the terrible cannibalism, that held its 
sway of terror over New Zealand , when towards the close of the 
last century the first Europeans landed on its coffst. What else 
is there that could induce a human being to devour his own kind- 
red, but want and starvation? There is no other reasonable way of 
explanation for an act, which is so abhorrent tonature, that it occurs 
even with animals only in exceptional cases when want compels 
them to take to it as a last resource. It was not barbarity , not 
savage cruelty, not monstrous heathenism, that drove the uncivil- 
zed man of the South Sea so far, as to drink his fellow’s blood, 
and eat his flesh ; the cannibalism of the South Sea Islanders is to 
be accounted for in no other way, than the cannibalism of the 
civilized European, when, shipwrecked, and on the point of star- 
vation, lie lays hold of his ill-fated fellow. Cannibalism also, is 
but one of the manifold forms of the struggle of life. 
It is thus alone that we are able to explain, why the history 
of the past century of New Zealand is but a terrible tale of war 
and carnage and horrid cannibalism, and why this unnatural state 
was put an end to within less than twenty years, when by the 
importation of swine and potatoes on the part of Europeans new 
means of subsistence had been placed within the natives’ reach. 
Cannibalism has ceased, as it began; but not so the struggle 
for existence. This has again assumed a new form. From the 
struggle with the animal world the native, as the stronger, had 
come out triumphant. But now the tawny South Sea Islander has 
to wrestle for his existence with “the pale faces“, and there is no 
doubt, for whom the dooming die is cast in this contest. I am 
undergone no mineral change. It is evident, from these and similar discoveries that 
the birds of the elephantopus and cramis species congregated together in flocks, while 
the more monstrous specimen known as Dinornis gigantem must have been a com- 
paratively solitary bird, as the bones of this class are scarce, and never found in 
any numbers in one spot. 
