XXXIV 
INTRODUCTION. 
persecuted, the Moas rapidly diminished in numbers, and finally became extinct. . Ihese traditions 
all agree in representing the Moa as living on fern-root, and as being inactive in its habits but fighting 
fiercely in self-defence. “ As inert as a Moa ” is a saying in use to the present day ; and the name 
“ moa,” still applied to a small patch of cultivation, has allusion to the manner in which these birds 
scratched up and harrowed the fern-root grounds. 
From what we know of the range and habits of the Struthiones in other parts of the world, it 
cannot be supposed that the extinct race of Moas, comprising twenty, if not more, species or varieties, 
some of them attaining to colossal dimensions, were always confined within the geographic limits of 
modern New Zealand. The Ostrich inhabits the arid deserts of Africa, the Rhea (of which there are 
two, if not three, species, each occupying a separate district) is spread over a great portion of America, 
extending from Patagonia to Peru, two species of Emu and a Cassowary occupy the Australian 
continent, the range of each being well defined, and eight other species of Cassowary are limited to 
New Britain, New Guinea, and the islands of the Indian Archipelago, each inhabiting a separate 
area. It may be safely assumed that the Moas of the remote past roamed over a wide continent now 
submerged, and that when, by the gradual subsidence of their domain beneath the waters of the Great 
Pacific, they were driven as it were into a corner and overcrowded, the struggle for existence became 
a severe one and the extinction of the race commenced ; that the more unwieldy giants, thus 
“ cabined and confined,” were the first to succumb ; and that the smaller species, perhaps in course of 
time differentiated from their ancestors by the altered physical conditions of their environment, con- 
tinued to live on till their final extirpation by man within recent historic times. 
Professor Owen compares New Zealand to one end of a mighty wave of the unstable and ever-shifting 
crust of the earth, of which the opposite end, after having been long submerged, has again risen with its 
accumulated deposits in North America, showing us in the Connecticut sandstones of the Permian period 
the footprints of the gigantic birds which trod its surface before it sank ; and he surmises that the 
intermediate body of the land-wave, along which the Dinornis may have travelled to New Zealand, has 
progressively subsided, and now lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. But Professor Hutton, in his treatise 
‘ On the Geographical Relations of the New Zealand Fauna,’ considers it necessary to account for the 
phenomenal number of Strutliious species inhabiting New Zealand, as compared with the other much 
larger areas of the earth’s surface. He supposes the existence of an ancient continent, with one or 
two species of Dinornis ; then, by some convulsion of nature, this continent sinks beneath the ocean, 
leaving its mountain-ranges exposed, in the form of islands, and the only refuge for the surviving 
Moas ; after a sufficiently long period to allow of specific changes, there is an elevation of the land 
and the differentiated birds are mingled together; then follows the final subsidence, when New 
Zealand as the central mountain-chain becomes a “ harbour of refuge ” for them all. In support of 
this bold hypothesis he refers to the remarkable fact of five or six distinct species of Cassowary 
inhabiting isolated localities extending from New Britain and New Guinea to the Molucca 
Islands. His general conclusion is thus expressed : — “ The distribution, therefore, of the Strutliious 
birds in the Southern Hemisphere points to a large Antarctic continent stretching from Australia through 
New Zealand to South America, and perhaps on to South Africa. This continent must have sunk, 
and Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa must have remained isolated from one 
another long enough to allow of the great differences observable between the birds of each country 
being brought about. Subsequently New Zealand must have formed part of a smaller continent, not 
connected either with Australia or South America, over which the Moa roamed. This must have been 
