Nature. Gigantic Birds.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1872, 5 July 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Nature. Gigantic Birds.

WITH BONES LARGER THAN THOSE OF AN OX. " The ostrich is a pretty big bird,'' said a gentleman who is interested in their introduction in this country, "but I have tho skeleton of a chicken that when alive could have walked right over one." "I should like to have a glimpse at that chicken," replied the Enquirer man, and forthwith he was taken to a room where some hajfdozen enormous skeletons were arranged, whose ponderous bones seemed more like those of an ox than of birds. One of the largest was nine feet three and a half inches in height and was labelled the Dinornis maximus. Its leg bones were enormous, and a kick from the living bird would have felled an ox. There was no appearance of even rudimentary wings, as in the ostrich, and tho feet showed one more toe than the bird. Some of the shorter birds, as the Palapteryx eUphantopus, five feet seven inches in height, had leg bones even heavier than the former. " Those birds," said the proprietor of the ancient hennery, " are, of course, all extinct, and are only found in New Zealand, that has produced so many remaikable birds." "How long have they been extinct?" asked the reporter. " That is a difficult question to answer," was the reply. " Perhaps a thousand years, perhaps less. There are legends, however, of them among the Maoris ; and, in fact, an old Maori at Port Nicholson who was asked if he had ever seen a Moa, replied yes, and that he had eaten the flesh, and said also that its neck was as large as that of a horse. In 1814 the Maori considered it not extinct, and boneß of the giants were found in 1874 that had pieces of dried skin upon them, and several feathers have been discovered. The color of the barbs was a chestnut grey, and the rounded portion of the tip white. In 1875 great excitement was caused by the announcement of the capture ot two living moas, but which was not substantiated, though Dr. Hector, the director of the Wellington Museum, believes it possible that a few moas may yet exist upon the grassy terraces of some of the New Zealand Alps. "The fiist to discover these wonderful creatmes," continued the speaker, " was the Rev. Dr. Colenso. He went on a visit to one of the tribes inhabiting the Bast Cape, and when in the town of Waiapu the natives told him about the great bones of what they called the moa. According to them, it had a face like a man's, lived in the air, and was guarded in the mountain by two terrible Tuataras, that watched it when it slept. Later Dr. Hector found a locality where enormous bird bones were buried, showing that there was at least some ground for the legend. According to him, the localities in which the remains were discovered belonged to the great glacier period. At one place, on the top of the Kaurio Mountains, a lot were found mixed in with human made implements of stone. Again, at Hamilton Swamp, over seven tons of the bones were discovered. The huge birds had probably been driven into the swamp by great fires, or perhaps enemies, and had there became caught in the treacherous bog and buried." " Would this have brought about their extinction ? " inquired the reporter. "No," was the reply, "it was probably due to other causes, and primarily to s. change of climate in New Zealand. Such is the belief of Mr. B. S. Booth, who has studied most carefully the locality where the seven tons of bones were fouad. He says that when the frost and snow of Winter began to set in, though far milder than now, it would have distressed the moa, as on account of Its gieat si?e it could not find shelter like smaller birds, and so it selected places where it would find the most warmth. The spring water in the one pit being of the same temperature as the earth, and far above freezing point (in fact it may have been a thermal spring), when all around the bird could not put down its foot without being bitten with, frost, or without placing it in snow or ice, what would be more natural for them to step into this comparatively warm water, which, to some extent, could relieve their suffering from cold in the lower extremities. Thus, the period when frost and snow begaD to 3et in was the commencement of the deposit of bones in this pit. The accumulation would have been very gradual, perhaps for centuries, and the periodical deposits would only have increased at the same rate as the frost and snow, this process continuing until not even in the most favored places would their eggs hatch, and the last of their race were, therefore, doomed to annihilation. A period would arrive which must have been with the poor birds a time of indescribable suffering. Thus afflicted with pain, famishing _ with hunger (as whatever their food was it lay deep under the snow), and finding cruel nature arrayed against them, pinching their bodies with piercing winds, from which they had no shelter, and cutting their feet with ice and frost, were it only as an alleviation of pain when dying, what more natural than for them to plunge into this spring ? The water being the same temperature as the earth, would feel quite warm to them, and there being no inducement for them to get out, as their food was cut off, they would settle in deeper and deeper, and remain till numbness and hunger put an end to their suffering. Mr. Booth accounts for the bones being soundest on the top as they would have been deposited so much later, and also for there being no bone 3 of young birds on top as it was long after incubation ceased that the old family was gathered to its resting place. There were no egg shells, as these deposits only took place in the Winter season, which was never the breeding season with the birds. " The eggs of the moa," continued the proprietor, " were enormous, and they are commonly found in the kitchen middens of the moa hunters, showing that they were esteemed as an article of food. They were about ten inches loDg, and one would have served forseveral men. One of the most interesting localities is what is known as the Moa Bone Point Cave, opened by Dr. Julius Haast, and from there my birds came. " The birds were first found in a place that was almost impossible to reach, and when the Moa Bone Point Cave was enlarged by the waves of the sea, the estuary of Heathcote Avon in its present condition did not exist. On the western side, close to the cavity, was a hard, doleritio stream, through which the Sumner road now passes to the sea. A ridge which gradually loses itself in the sand was formed of great masses of rock, which- were detached by the surf. The formation of this ridge principally took place when this part of the peninsula wa3 twelve or fifteen feet lower than at present, the upper line of boulders being about sixteen feet above the present high water mark. When the land rose again the sea was cut off by this boulder ridge from the entrance pi the cave, across which lay a huge rock, protecting and preventing it from being filled up by the deposits of drift sand now forming on the plot close to it. A second and lower line of boulders was formed in front of the former, about five feet above the present high water mark, with a small terraced space behind it. Since then other deposits forming in the Avon Heathcote estuary have been added as a small belt in iront of this line of boulders, brought into its present condition by the action of the open sea. Notwithstanding the constant ohanges on land and sea, the cave retained its individuality. " The discoverers found the opening of the cave about forty feet below the Sumner road, and about thirty feet above high water mark. Lowering themselves over the rooks they found an opening about thirty feet broad, almost filled, however, by- immense xqeks that < bud been burled »g»insfc it, They entered ft I

large aperture that by the dim light Bhowed itself to be about one hundred long by seventy feet wide, and, as near as they could judge, about thirty feet high. Following along the broken orags in this ioom, they passed by a small passage, into a second oave, which was eighteen feet long, fourteen feet wide, and about eleven feet high. At its southern end one of, the natives discovered a small passage just large enough to admit his body, which led into a third or inner chamber that waß twenty-two feet long, about sixteen feet wide, and twenty feet high, and running, like the first cave, north and Bouthv There their attention was attraoted by many objeots trodden into the floor of the cave that showed ikhad been inhabited, as a dwelling at some early period. Dr. Haast determined to undertake a systematic examination, and the discoveries made well repaid him. In a few days the men turned over a deposit covering an area about twenty by thirty feet wide, and a few feet below the surface some gigantic bones were found. The mon thoroughly believed them to bo the remains of a gigantic race of men, so similar was the appearance of the leg bones to those of the human race; but the discovery of several heads and massive claws settled the question of their identity. Works of industry were not wanting that proved conclusively that these monsters were contemporary with the earliest man, as, mixed with the remains of birdfl, they obtained pieces of timber evidently worked and planed down by polished stone implements, and upon one of which a coating of red color was still visible. Among the other objects of wood exhumed were several pieces of "tra," a thin and long wooden spear made of " totara," a tree that grows only in the northern part of the northern island. The Bpear is used by the Maoris for shooting birds. For this purpose they form a short tube around it with one hand, through which, after taking aim, they jerk the thin spear up suddenly with the other. The greatest portion of a shakakai, a wooden dish made of pukatta, used for placing fat birds in, so as not to lose the oil, or for the preparation of the juice of the tupahuhi, and many more implements used in the household and for hunting and fishing were foand. In this search one iten? was missed that was certainly expected, namely, human remains ; and it was not until two or three strata had been removed that that interesting find was made ; but at last a Maori skeleton was found a few feet from the south-western wall. The aborigirfes who had placed the body there had dug through the shell bed about eight inches, then two inches through the dirt and ash beds belonging to the older series, and our inches through the agglomeratic deposit. They had then excavated the marine sands for several feet, and placed the corpse in a sitting position in the grave thus formed, tied together with flax, the face toward the wall of the rock, covering it with part of the sand thrown out, the rest being thrown with the shells excavated around the spot. However, it was clearly visible that the ground had afterward been levelled under the feet of human occupants, and about six inches of newly formed shell bed, being continuous and level with the more distant layer of the same nature, had been deposited over the grave, the whole being capped with three inches of European accumulations. It is thus evident that the burial had not only taken place long before the Europeans came to the cave, but that the Maoris continued for a number of years to frequent the cave and to take their meals there after the burial. " Were there other large birds living contemporary with the moa ? " asked the reporter. " Yes," replied the bird man, " there have been some bones found among them that belooged to a bird, the harpagonia, a bird of prey that was powerful enough to have carried off the largest moa. Then there was a gigantic goose, chemiornis. A FEENCH GIANT. " The tallest bird, however, continued the speaker, " comes from France. It was a wading bird, supposed to have been over twelve feet in height and far more bulky than the ostrich. Imagine a crane of this size wandering through our marshes of the present day, a peck of whose bill would have crushed a man's skull ! The bird was discovered by Professor Herbert in the lower deposits of Thendon, near Paris, and named the gastornis Edwardsii." " Here is an egg," said the bird authority, taking up an enormous cast, " that belonged to a Madagascar bird of long ago. The shell will hold 210 hens' eggs or their contents. A fine country for omelets that. The bird was something like an ostrich, and^is now known as the Alpinornis. They and" the eggs are found in the sand banks of the southern portions of the island. In all four different geneia of these giants are known. Besides these are numbers of others, though not so largo, considerably larger than any of their kind now alive. Such was the solitaire of the Island of Bodriguez, and the dode that was a gigantic pigeon as large as a swan. Earlier in tho history of the world we find the birds with veritable teeth like fishes, as the Hesperornis, a carnivorous living ostrich. The Archacapterix also had teeth, and had its feathers attached on each side of a long tail like that of the monkey ; in fact, every year is adding to the facts that tend to show that the maximum of animal growth, as regards, size culminated ages ago." — Cincinnati Enquirer.