459 
scrub on the sides of the track would catch the spears and break the jagged end off, 
leaving it in the bird. As it had to pass many men, the broken spear-points thus put 
into the bird had caused it to yield in power whenit had gained the open fern country, 
where it was attacked in its feeble condition by the most daring of the tribe.” ‘To this 
rendering of the native tradition, Mr. W. T. L. Trowers, F.L.S., of Wellington, New 
Zealand, appends the following note :—* I may mention that a hill on the east coast, 
called ‘ Karanga na Hape,’ is said to derive its name from the circumstance that Hape, 
a chief of the Arawa, pursued a wounded Moa up the hill side, and attacked it with 
a ‘taiaha,’ when the bird kicked him and broke his thigh, and he rolled down the 
hill” 1. The ‘taiaha’ is the axe or adze of green jade-stone. The obsidian flint 
afforded the trenchant knives for cutting up the bird. Of this mineral the Maoris 
noted four kinds:—the black, called ‘tuhua’; the light-coloured, called ‘ waiapu ’ ; 
the green, called ‘ panetao ’ ; and the red, called ‘kahurangi.’ ‘“ The first only was 
used in cutting up the Moa.” 
From this act probably was derived the ancestral knowledge communicated to 
Mr. White, viz. that “ the Moa swallowed stones, which the Maori says was only of a 
certain sort; and hence when they see a Turkey hone, or oil-stone, they call it ‘ Moa.’ 
The stone used for polishing the Ponnamu is called ‘ Hoanga Moa’ (the stones which 
the Moa swallows) ; also comes the saying, when a heap of stones are seen on a plain 
where no other stones are seen, ‘ He tutal Moa’ (there is the Moa excrement).” 
This saying is strongly confirmatory of the basis of actual observation on which the 
details on the native natural history of the Moas, collected by Mr. White, have rested. 
That stone-heaps should be pointed out by Maoris as the excrement of a bird, would 
have excited in most unscientific settlers a scornful incredulity. But Moa-hunters may 
have seen such actually discharged, and would certainly, in opening the gizzard of a 
bird eviscerated prior to cooking, find such smoothly worn rounded pebbles as are 
described p. 337, and figured Plate XCII. fig. 9. 
« Acain, asthe Maori after his arrival here was the cause of the extinction of the 
Moa, hence, when a tribe has been cut off by war, and not an individual has been saved, 
the tribe is said to be ‘ Ngaroite ngaro ate Moa’ (lost as the extinction of the Moa).” 
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om, cit. p. 80. 
