Relics of the Moa.

Cromwell Argus, Volume II, Issue 98, 26 September 1871, Page 6

Relics of the Moa.

An elaborate paper by Dr Hector on “Recent Moa Remains in Now Zealand ” was read at- a Lite meeting of the Otago Institute. The following extracts may prove interesting to many of our renders : “ Tiie discovery of a mores egg. containing • the bones of an embryo chick, in a road cutI ting at Cromwell, was recorded by me in IS'oZ. (Zooi. Trans.. London.) This egg | was found embedded in the sand two feet below the surface, and was unfortunately I broken by the workmen who extracted it, so i that many fragments were lost. Those | which remain, have, however, been fitted to- ! gethcr, and give the form of mure than one 1 half of the- egg, which appears to have had the following dimensions : —Long diameter, 18.0 inches; short diameter (1.1 inches. A | model of this egg, which 1 have lately prei pared, will be found in the Otago Museum. | The texture of the shell is soft and chalky, ; having no doubt been corroded by solvents 1 contained in the soil. In order to obtain the ; probable extent of change to which the ogg- • shell has boon subjected in this manner, a : fragment was aualayscd and proved to conI tain only 9 per cent, of organic matter, while I the egg-shell of the cam contains as much as ; 7.8!) per cent-., from which we may infer that ; the shell of the jVTo.a egg lias been almost ; wholly deprived of its animal matter. “ On the top of the Garrick mountains, at ! an altitude of 30!K> feet above the sea, Captain . Fraser discovered a gully, in which were ; numerous heaps of bones, and along with | them native implements of stone, among which was a well-finisnod cleaver of blue ! slate, and also a coarsely-made hornstone ; cleaver, the latter of a material that must | have been brought from a very great disj tance. “ I have now to describe another romarki able specimen from the same district, being i the cervical vertebrae of a moa, apparently i of the largest size, upon the posterior aspect I of which the skin, partly covered with feathers, is still attached by the shrivelled | muscles and ligaments. The specimen in ■ question belongs to Dr Thomson, of Clyde, | who obtained it from a gold-miner, and he jkindly forwarded it to me for description; It was discovered I am informed, in a cave, | or under an over-hanging mass of mica schist; but the particulars of the locality have not yet been .accurately ascertained, or I whether any other part of the bird is still to be found. “These interesting discoveries render it probable that the inland district of Otago, at ; a time when its grassy plains and rolling hills j were covered with a dense scrubby vegetation | or light forest growth, was where the giam, wingless birds of Now Zealand' lingered to i latest times. It is impossible to convey an idea of the profusion of bones, which only a fewy cars ago were found in this district, scattered on the surface of the ground, or buried in the alluvial soil in the. neighbourhood of streams and river?. At the present Uuu

this country is particularly arid as compared ■with the prevalent character of New Zealand, It is perfectly treeless—nothing but the smallest-aized shrubs being found within a distance of sixty or seventy miles. The surface features comprise round-backed ranges of hilts of schistose rock with swamps on the top, deeply cut by ravines that open out on I basin-shaped plains formed of alluvial do- | posits that have been everywhere moulded | into beautifully regular terraces, to an v>jAij tude of 1700 feet above the sea-level. I the mountain slopes wore at one time covor-jN j with forest, the stumps and prostrate trunks I of large pine trees, and the mounds and pits ! on the surface of the ground which mark old I forest land, abundantly testify, although it | is probable that the intervening plains have I never supported more than a dense thicket of shrubs, or were partly occupied by swamps, j The greatest number of Moa bones were found I where rivers debouch on the plains—and that i at a compartively late period those plains were | the hunting-grounds of the aborigines, can Ibe proved most incontestably. Under some j overhanging rocks in the neighbourhood of i the Clutha river, at a place named by the first |explorers “Moa Flat,” from the abundance ■of bones which lay strewn on the surface, 1 | rude flakes of a kind of stone not occurring in ; that district, wore found associated with heaps !of Moa bones. Forty miles further in the ini terior, and at the same place where the Moa’s ; nock was recently obtained, Captain Fraser, j in 1834:, discovered what he described to me |as a manufactory for such flakes and knives j of chert as could be used as rough cuttingi instruments, in a cave formed by overhanging I j rocks, and sheltered only from south-west I | storms, as if an accumulation by a storm- j | stayed party of natives. With these were | ■ associated Moa bones, and other remains.”