BONES FROM MAURICEVILLE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3182, 6 May 1909, Page 4

BONES FROM MAURICEVILLE.

OLDER THAN THE MAORIS. Among the moit venerable relics. in a place where many things are ancient the Dimicion P-'tiseum —are some bones recently received from the limestone qjarrjes worked at Mauricevills. Tne specimens of stone sent to Mr Hamilton show the bones of birds, including a small species of moa, the kiwi, and a number of smaller birds. The rare ground par- | rot, the kakapu, i.3 also represented I in the collection. The bones have been preserved not in the limestone proper, but in travertine, deposited" by springs heavily charged with lime. This material has been formed in large quantities in the vicinity of the Mauriceville quarries. dry bones are not the remnants of a luscious Maori feast. No tooth of chief or slave ever gnawed upon them. Mr Hamilton assigns them an age dating back long before the advent of the Maoris. He estimates that they reposed in their travertine grandeur some long hundreds of years.