The Moa's History

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 139, 29 June 1937, Page 10

The Moa's History

VARIOUS SPECIES Possibie Causes oi Its j Extinction PR CROMPTON'S ADDRESS Th« story of the moa "was the theme of a scientific paper presented by Dr. K. E. Grompton, pf Havelock North, at the meefcing .of the Hastings Historical Society last evening. The Rt, Bev. F. A. Bennett, Bishop of Aotearoa, presided oyer a 'good attendance and in his introductory reniarks he mentioned that thei'o was something mysterious afaout the moa because no-one could say definitely how it hecame extinct. Maori traditioa »was not very clear about the moa, smd there were very few references to it in Maori .songs and classics. Tracing the very early history of New Zealand, Dr. Crompton -said that one of the most remarkable facts was that the flightless birds have been the , dominant foi'-m of life in New Zealand to thp exclusion of all other large animals. In size and in the number of species the moas were equally remark- . abie. They had been to New Zealand what the bi'son were to North America, west of the Rockies, and the antelope to Sonth Africa. Tha first hint that the scientific world had of the existen.ee of the moa, he said, was a paper by Prof essor, afterwards Sir KicHard Owen, who was given by a Dr. Eule a fragment of pone, eight inehes long, which had been part of a thdgh bone of a North Island species of moa. From this unproinising bit of bono the prof essor deduced the existence of the great flightless bird. It was an as ontstanding a piece of deduction as the history of science could show. One strikdng fact about the moa was that in all the rest of the world there were about a dozen species of the iiatbreasted bird; in New Zealaud there were, untii quite recent times, 22 species of moas, wuich came undcr the same category, as well as four species of kiwis, alsq flat-breast.ed birds. Of the 22 species pix were found only in the North Island and not in the South Island; 10 in the South Island only and not in the North; and four were common to both islands. The two others were known only from early fossils, The speaker exhibited portions of tho leg bones of several of the species and intimated that he proposed to exhibit a complete ekeleton of one, found at Kaiwaka^ in' Hastings iu Ihe uear future. Genernl Appearance. Touching on ttie general appearance of the moa, Dr. Cromptoii said that one or two models had been made-up, but he thought they made the moa unnecessarily plaiu and dawdy. Mauy feathers had been found and most were yelJ.pw or amber-brown in colour- with purple tips. Some were chestnutbrown; oth,ers pure white and some had been black with a white spot at the tip. There was sufficient anfoxmation avaliable to lead one to the conclusion that the moa was quite a striking and beautifnlly-eoloured bird with a hairlike, rather than a feathery, plumage. They must have been quite handsome birds. 'i'ouching on the habits of the moa, Dr. Crompton said that he Wished to dispose of the f allacy that the moa was a bird of the open spaees because .of its oulky size. He had. seen this assump- i tion several times in pript, but one had ouJy to realise that the mopse, with its enormous spread of horns, could xua threugh the Canadian bush at the speed of a gallop.ing horsc, Then again the elephant, if it chose, could fade into the jfchickest timber Jike a ghost. "Put a moa 's head down and ' it is most ofiicieutiy stream-lined," said the speaker. Another poiut over which there appeared to be a wrong constr.uction compiled, he said, was in the matter of nesting. It was conteuded by some ; people that the eggs were not ineubated by the birds, but by sun heat and decaying vegetation. This supposition was based.on the fragiiity of the eggshells and the size of the birds, He pointed ou-t, however, that the ostrich, for example, only scratched a shallow pan in the grouud and managed to get along all right with the hatching. "The Maoris undisputedly were very fond of the moa eggs," he said, "and the great number they destroyed «must have had a great deal to do with the extermination of the, moa. " 3,000,000 Years Olfi. As an indication of the great age of the earliest known moa bones^ Dr. Crompton mentioned that only oue btme liad been found of the very earliest period and that on an isjaud in tho Waitemata Harbour. However, there wero several pieces o£ bone of the second order and one, aequir.ed by tho Hawke's Bay Museujn last year, which he .exhibited to the meeting, was part : of a tliigh bone, and it is some 3,000,0.00 years old, The fossil found in ihe limestone at Craggy Eange, ou the Tukituki river, came from the inieriuediate age, When reekoning its age tens of thousands of years should be counted rather than centuries, "80 we • see the moa had had a good iunings, he remarked with a smile. , Concerning the question of the ex tinctiou of the moa, Dr. Crompton said . that some 00 or 70 years ago 'that was hotly and strongly argued. In fact uolhing in the history of New Zealand science luis given rise to suck acrimony as did this controversy. He said that he often wondered if their extinction was not due to some devastating epidemic disease. This was only a speculative opinion, but it was an established and known fact that in other parts of the world there had been suck outbreaks that had almost entirely exterminated particnlar species of birds and animals. Dr. Crompton also mentioned that from ;.pieces . of ■ bones acquired •. it . was

obvious that the moa? were in existence in, comparatively speaking, moaern times. Several bones had been found wkieh, he considered, could not be over 100 yeare old. It has always been a puzzle to him why it was that there > had not been-loeated a few paars of moas in the dense bush and in the spaxsely-populated areas in the' South: IsiandL Dr. Crompton then proceeded to out- ; liue some of the place names called ■ ai'ter the moa, some of the Maori sayings and proverbs and several of the traditions relating to the moa. From these, he said, it had ,b.e.en possibie, to a certain extent, to deduce the haliits aud characherishics of the moa. "We may think ,of the moa as a great bulky bird stalking about the land in absolute secuxity, his only enemy the great eagle," he said. "Except for the .eagle the moa was not only the largest thing in'height, but was the only large animal at all. It wa® the dominant race to a degrce unknown in any other animal iin any other country. " The speaker was aeeorded a hearty v,ote of thanks on the motion of Mr Charlee Bennett.