NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1507, 8 February 1916, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Mr Lander made an interesting find lately on the western slopes of Mount Egmont. At a height of about 3,500 feet he discovered a number of bones, some of which he recognised as moa bones, but others he could not identify at all. He brought what he could carry away with him. One of the bones is the under part of the skull of a large animal in a complete state of preservation, except that one tooth was lost in transit. It is a little like the under jaw of a horse, but other bones do not bear out a theory that it is a horse's skeleton that Mr Lander found, though among them is the shell of a hoot, like a horse’s. His idea is that it is the skeleton of an extinct animal, and that this particular animal and the moa whose bones were found in the same place met on the mountain side and both succumbed in an encounter, and rolled down into the gulley where he found the remains. A chase after a large sting-ray —called by the Maoris weku —the other afternoon was attended with rather disastrous results for a valuable dog owned by a wellknown Native resident of the Matapihi (says the Bay of Plenty Times). A number of Natives, armed with three-pronged forks, were wading in shallow water in a portion of the harbour between Whareroa and Matapihi in quest of fish, when they sighted the weku and pursued it. Two dogs were accompanying the party, and one of the canines got too close to the sting-ray, which succeeded in driving one of its stings through a foreleg and then into the body of the dog, the sting penetrating several inches in the vicinity of the heart. The weku made off, and the dog was taken ashore, where the sting was extracted. The poor animal lost a great quantity of blood, and eventually collapsed. The possibility of its recovery was very remote. Subsequently the Maoris secured a boat and resumed the pursuit of the weku, which they succeeded in killing. The sting-ray measured about five feet across. A few weeks ago a fishing party killed a large sting-ray, and several others have lately been sighted in shallow waters in the inner reaches of the harbour.