THE MOA.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1074, 21 July 1871, Page 2

THE MOA.

Me. R. Matthews, an old settler, writes as follows to the editor of the Southern Cross: — Some 25 or 30 years ago, while living in Wanganui and being a good deal travelling about among the Wanganui and Ngatiruanui natives, and hearing them speak of the moa, I asked them to tell me an.thing they knew about it, when they would recite with much pleasure a short ditty relative to washing and cooking the moa, the substance of which was that the moa lighted on a branch of the rata, which broke down under its weight, and then the moa was taken, the said branch cut up, and a fire made on which the bird was placed ; but as the moa did not become properly well cooked they [the Maoris] cut some koromiko [native shrub], and other fire was made, the bird put on, and what with the fat from the moa and the oil from the koromiko the moa became well roasted. On one occasion I assisted a party in procuring some moa bones. We brought one head [or skull] of the moa, which was about the size of a small sheep's head, and some other bones ; but the most plentiful bone was the short thick thigh-bone of the moa. At a much more recent date I was employed on a sheep-run in the Province of Otago, and in walking over the run occasionally I used to see some of the said short thick thigh-bones of the moa, several of them lying in one place, but not one of the other bones did I see on those occasions; so that I am led to infer from

the tenor of the ditty above alluded to, and large short bones being most numer. ous, that the natives in eating the mosi would, sometimes at least, not think the short thick bones worth breaking for the purp ,se of extracting the marrow they All the bones I have seen of the moa, viz., the skull, thigh and leg bones, were in a good state of preservation ; and those I saw in the Otago province were lying on the surface. The parties alluded to were Capts. Collinsoo. and Henderson, and the bones were pro. cured at or near a place called the Wai, mate, about imu>ay between Wanganui and Taranaki.