INTRODUCTION. 
XXIX 
f P ^ cliext, all worn and polished by attrition, showing that they had been in use for a considerable 
time 
Th TT 
, 6 on -Walter Mantell, whose opinions on this point are entitled to every consideration, assigns 
& er antiquity to the Moa-bones that are found under the stalagmite which forms the flooring 
to certain limestone 
caves, similar in character to those bone-caves in which traces of the early animals 
habited Gieat Britain have been preserved to us ; and he has declared his conviction that the 
ancient species of Moa were extirpated by a race which inhabited New Zealand before the 
annal of the aboriginal Maoris f. 
Many of these bones have been found under a considerable depth of fluviatile deposits which may 
6 ° f Quater nary or even of Pliocene age. 
ere can ‘ 3e doubt, however, from the evidences already mentioned, that some of the species, 
^ tho largest stature, existed contemporaneously with the ancestors of the present race ; and 
^ ^ ^ antell himself, during his early explorations in the South Island, discovered, drawn upon the 
of a ca^ e in the Waitaki valley, a rude likeness of the Moa by some aboriginal artist of a bygone 
t,eneiation, painted with red ochre on the face of the rock, probably soon after the arrival of the first 
Maori immigrants. 
A ^ ^o, in 1865, described (Proc. Zool. Soc.) the feathers of Dinornis robustus, was the 
^ o establish the fact that the feathers in some of the species of Moa possessed a large accessory 
I tj 6 01 .^° U ^ e s h a ft, as in the Emus and Cassowaries of Australia and the Indian Archipelago, 
ese featheis “the barbs consist of slender flattened fibres, bearing long silky and very delicate 
rbules, without any trace of barbicels.” 
In 1870 some feathers were found by Mr. S. Thomson, at the junction of Manuherekia with the 
)neux liver, in association with Moa-bones under fifty feet of sand. Captain Hutton, in a letter 
lofessor Owen, described the feathers as being “quite fresh in appearance,” and as having “lost 
^ e of their colouring.” The largest of these is 7 inches in length, and gradually widens from *25 
^ lnC ^ 1 t ^ le ^ase 1° rather more than ‘75 at the tip, where it is broadly rounded off. “The 
,, a ls down y» the barbs having unconnected barbules, and is of a brownish-grev colour. In 
the upper half th k i 
„ , c cae oarbs are rather distant, unconnected, and without barbules. The brownish grey 
of the lower mrt . 
. 11 passes gradually into black, which colour it keeps as far as the rounded tip, which 
P — We, foiming a narrow segment of a circle.” It would seem from this description that these 
disturbed b ^ < ' * ia P mari B° whom I am indebted for these ‘ Moa-stones ’) writes : — “ When we came upon the ground 
impossible t ° Wlu( t (the soil being shifting sand) we soon found a number of distinct groups of gizzard-stones. It was 
distinct n- Iaista k° them. In several cases they lay with a few fragments of the heavier bones. In all cases they were in 
lay thickly ,t >S * °' GIJ —kere they had become scattered, each group only covered a few square yards of ground, and in that space 
one place If { j' ' "^ le P ecu ^ ar feature of the stones was that they were almost all opaque white quartz pebbles. In 
picked up he ^ U SIna ^ 8 r °up of small pebbles of different colour, more like the few brown water-worn pebbles which may be 
°f pebbles .° U s ‘ -these lay with a set of bones much smaller than the very large bones I found with most of the clusters 
is possible th- 1 t]i ^ ^ a ^ 6r ^ ese hrowu pebbles, as I thought it uncertain whether they were gizzard-stones or not, though it 
pebbles 1 • „ 6 s P ecies 1° which the smaller bones belonged was not so careful in selecting white stones. A glance at the 
and I collected th ^ ^ ^ ® urrounc ^ n S country showed that the quartz-pebbles were not collected here Mr. Murdoch 
belongs to V ^ P^kie 8 ! and these I can pronounce complete or nearly so. It is beyond question, too, that each set 
giant set contain ^ ^°' ^ wta As 3 lb. 9 oz. ; No. 2 weighs 4 lb.; while No. 3 weighs no less than 5 lb. 7 oz. This 
(Trans N 7 i ^ m dmdual stones weighing over 2 oz. ; indeed, I have picked out 8 stones weighing almost exactly 1 lb.” 
• ■-*. Inst. vol. xvii. pp. i 73j 174-) 
T Trans. N.-Z. !nst. vol. i. pp. i 8 , 19. 
