OTAGO INSTITUTE.

Evening Star, Issue 3608, 15 September 1874, Page 2

OTAGO INSTITUTE.

At a meeting of this body last night (Mr J. T. Thomson in the chair), Capaiu Hutton r ®ad a paper on the Earnscleugh ease, where moa remains were found. The conc'usion arrived at by Captain Hatton is, that “notwithstanding the fact that at least three of the birds found tn. the cave belong to the genera now extinct, that the weight of the evidence goes to show that these remains are not very old and that probably they do not date further back than the commencement of the present century. ” During the autumn the cave has been carefully cleared out by Mr Martin for the Msueura Committee, and the whole of the bones that be obtained have been deposited in the Otago Museum, together with all the more valuable moa remains from the cave, which have been presented by Dr A, T. Thomson. In the discussion that followed the reading of the paper MrR Gillies said many of the old settlers had made statements which Itfb the impression that the moa was a comparatively recent bird. He had, for instance, hea-d old settlers and whalers say that they had seen dogs gnawing moa b mes ; this being mentioned as an indication of their freshness.—The Chairman remarked that the statements of the old settlers as to what they had observed should be pot from them while there was an opportunity of doing so. He mentioned that mna boms were plentiful on the surface of the Province eighteen years ago, but had since disappeared from the surface. Having disappeared in eighteen years, they might expect that eighteen years previous to that time they must have been very fresh at the places where the Maoris apparently used the flesh for food.

faper* were read on the following subjects:— “On the Zodiacal Light, as seen in Southern Latitudes,” by Mr H. skey ; ’ “Description ©f a New Sea Anemone,” by Professor Coughtrey (read by Captain Hutton); “Description of two New Species of Mollusca,” by Captain Hutton. Captain Hutton, in reply to Mr A. H. Ross, who asked what steps had been taken by tlje Institute f >r the purpose of observing the transit of across the sun’s disc, in December, said that the Provincial Government had agreed to let the Chief Surveyor go down to meet the American party at the Bluff, on their arrival there. The General Government had been asked to reinstate the Observatory at Caversham, so that while the English party was at Lyttelton, and the American party at the Bluff the longitude of Caversham might be checked and ascertained. In reply to a further question put by Mr Ross, he said that the instruments in the possession of the Government had not been placed at the disposal of the Institute.