MAORI MIDDENS. 
417 
were merely extemporized for the occasion, to save better 
and more highly-prized implements. From the polished 
fragments of stone axes found along side of those rude chert 
knives, this was evidently the case with the Maori; and 
what can be more probable, than that the ancient Danes 
merely used theirs to save their more highly-prized bronze 
and iron ones, and thus threw them away as worthless, 
when they had done with them ; perhaps they were only 
used by those who prepared the food, and were never in the 
hands of the chief at all. 
It is, therefore, highly probable, whatever may be the age 
of our Maori middens, that the natives were then quite as 
advanced as they were when the European first landed on 
their shores. These ovens were evidently contemporaneous 
with the moa, and when they were first used, that wonderful 
bird was then abundant, and perhaps the last remaining 
representatives of those struthious giants in the whole is- 
land were cooked in them. The perfect state of their 
remains, forbids our assigning them an antiquity of more 
than two centuries, and very probably not even the half of 
that. Maori songs of hunting the moa are still to be met 
with, as well as proverbs relating to them, and even the 
manner of hunting them is preserved. The natives state that 
when a battue was to take place, notice was given to all the 
surrounding villages, whose inhabitants united in forming 
a cordon, and surrounding the birds, drove them forward, 
gradually contracting the circle as they brought them to the 
edge of some lake, then rushing forward with horrid cries, 
compelled the frightened birds to take the water, where 
they were easily killed, as there they could not use their legs 
in their defence. 
Another method of hunting them was, to set fire to the 
thickets of Koromiko or Veronica, where they resorted, 
either to feed on the leaves of that shrub, or for concealment ; 
and to this effect is the old proverb — “ Ko te Koromiko 
te rakau i tunu ai te moa:” “ the veronica is the tree that 
roasted the moa.” Both these methods must have been 
highly destructive to the race ; when large bodies of men 
