it was no easy climb, even for a person accustomed to the work, to reach our moa cave. We also heard of a cave in which moa bones had been found, at a still greater elevation among the Hector Mountains, on the east shore of Lake Wakatipu. Other moa bones were obtained from a cave, but a few feet above the waters of the lake and lower than some of the lake terraces.

The former existence of gigantic birds in New Zealand was first made known in 1839, when a few fragments of their remains found their way into the hands of scientific men in England. Not long afterwards, Mr. Walter Mantell made his well-known discovery of moa bones on the east coast of the South Island. This extensive collection passed into the possession of the British Museum, and furnished Professor Owen with the material for his splendid study of these remains, which were grouped under two genera, Dinornis and Palapteryx, and these again subdivided into numerous species. The specific distinctions are somewhat difficult to trace, as the bones vary in size; the smallest metatarsal bone in our collection measures 7.5 inches in length and 3 inches in least circumference, while the corresponding measurements of the metatarsal bone of Dinornis giganteus are 18.5 and 5.5 inches respectively, the tibia of the same bird being three feet in length; between these limits there is an almost complete gradation in the size of the species.

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In later years numerous discoveries of these remains have been made, both on the North and South Island, and from deposits. along the shore that are swept by the tides, to an elevation of five thousand feet or more amid the Southern Alps.

One of the most remarkable deposits yet discovered was at Hamilton, Otago, where from an area of about seven hundred square feet, three and one half tons of moa bones were obtained, for the Otago Museum. As a great number of bones were too much decayed to be collected, this amount indicates only about one half of the total quantity contained in this limited deposit. These bones were found literally packed down in bulk, entirely separated from each other, and mixed indiscriminately throughout the deposit. The place in which they were found seems at one time to have been a lagoon surrounding a spring, to which the moas resorted in great numbers, the bones of those that died. being scattered and trampled down by the living birds. Together with the moa bones were found the remains of an extinct goose, and also of an eagle that once lived in New Zealand. The reason for the moas collecting and dying in such numbers at this

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one locality is obscure; it has been suggested by Mr. Booth, the discoverer of the fossils, that it was owing to a refrigeration of climate, the birds collecting in this spring for warmth as the winters became more cold. Dr. Hochstetter also obtained, during his visit to New Zealand, valuable moa skeletons from limestone caves in the South Island. These skeletons were found beneath deposits of stalagmite, and were entire, showing that these birds inhabited the caves and had retired there for refuge when death overtook them. Together with these skeletons the ossified rings of the trachea were found, and also little heaps of smoothed pebbles, "moa-stones," which had been swallowed by the moa to assist digestion, in the same manner as the domestic fowl swallows sand and gravel.

The remains of these gigantic birds are not only found in caves and recent river deposits, but also scattered over the surface of the country; although it is somewhat uncommon to find them thus exposed at the present time, yet in the early days of the colonists they were quite abundant, and the little heaps of "moa-stones" were frequently found beneath the ferns. Some years since Dr. Hector observed, near Lake Wakatipu, over thirty skeletons of the moa lying at the foot of a cliff, in the shelter of which they seem to have sought refuge from the storm that destroyed them.

Remains of moa bones, and also fragments of the egg-shells of the same birds have been found, showing the action of fire, and mingled with the charred bones of men and dogs in the ancient kitchen-middens of the New Zealanders. The large bones are also found broken open as if to obtain the marrow; and the eggshells have been found in the graves of the aborigines. Many other facts have been brought to light by the scientific men who have labored in New Zealand, proving that the moa still existed on those islands after their settlement by man, who introduced a new and higher element into the "struggle for existence" that resulted in the extermination of the moa.

There is but little doubt that the moa, which was once so abundant in New Zealand, furnished the principal food of the natives as they increased and occupied the land. This is the more evident when we remember that those islands furnish little that is sufficiently nutritious to serve as food for man. Nothing like the delicious berries and larger fruits that abound in our own country are found in New Zealand. The food of the natives, at the time of the discovery of those islands, was confined to a kind

of sweet potato, which they had brought with them in their emigration, the succulent root of a fern (Pteris esculenta), which, although abundant, is exceedingly indifferent food, together with shell-fish. To these were added the flesh of birds, especially of the "mutton bird" (Puffinus tristis), and of seal and fish ; then, too, the scanty board was filled out with human flesh. It is not without reason, therefore, that a bird so large, and furnishing so much food as the moa, should be eagerly sought after by the Maoris, and, being unable to fly, and unlike the ostrich, having no desert to flee to, soon became extinct.

The suggestion of Hochstetter that it was only after the extermination of the moa, and the consequent scarcity of animal food, that the New Zealanders were driven to cannibalism, is full of significance.

There are uncertain indications that New Zealand was inhabited by an older people than the present aborigines, a race of "black fellows," as the Maori traditions state, who were exterminated by the more warlike Polynesians. Some consider this older race as the true moa hunters, who exterminated those giant birds many hundred years ago; the active search that is now being made in the ancient cave dwellings of New Zealand, it is expected, will throw more light on this interesting subject. The adventures of the New Zealand moa hunters, armed with spears and implements of stone, to whom the use of the bow was unknown, must have equaled in wildness and danger the struggles of the Neolithic hunters of Europe with the cave bear or the fierce aurochs. What wild, weird scenes those deep valleys of the Southern Alps must have witnessed, when, after the successful hunt, the natives gathered about their camp-fires, that lit up their dark tattooed faces and shone on the strange vegetation around, to feast on the flesh of the moa, or partake of its huge eggs, roasted on the hot stones of the oven!

How long these birds have been extinct is as yet unsettled. The fact that the bones are found so plentifully, often lying exposed on the surface of the ground, and also the fresh condition of many of the remains, some of which still retain the dried muscles and feathers attached, show that the moa lived at a very recent date, geologically speaking. The Maoris, however, with whom we conversed while in New Zealand, although some of them were cannibals in their youth, had never heard of these birds as living, not even through the traditions of their ancestors. Some of the old legends of the natives, still extant, do contain,

however, references to the moa; it is stated that their long plumes excelled in beauty the crest of the white heron, which is so highly prized by the Maoris.

That the moa not only inhabited New Zealand in great numbers, but also exhibited great variety among themselves, is shown by the differences in the size of the vast number of remains that have been collected. While the larger bones of Dinornis elephantopus were short and exceedingly thick and ponderous, the femur measuring nearly eight inches in circumference at the smallest portion of the shaft, the corresponding bones of D. gracilis were longer and comparatively slim, indicating a bird of more elegant proportions. The largest of the moas, D. giganteus, that stood full ten feet high in its natural position, and could reach to a much greater height, presents a great contrast to the smallest of these birds with which we are acquainted, which could not have been taller than a large turkey.

We have but to greatly exaggerate in our fancy the general form of the wingless and tailless kiwi, to have an accurate idea of their ancient representative. The moa was not furnished, however, with the long, slim bill that the kiwi uses so adroitly in probing the earth in quest of worms, but possessed a much shorter and stronger bill, indicating a more strictly vegetable diet. Its principal food was, probably, the root of the Pteris esculenta, which it could easily tear up with its powerful claws.

Besides the various species of Dinornis and Palapteryx, the remains of numerous other fossil birds have been found, not approaching these in size, however; they include species of Apteryx, penguin, albatross, parrot, goose, etc., showing that the feathered tribes have long been the rulers in New Zealand.

During the past few years so much interest has been taken in these fossils that they have found their way into nearly every public museum in the world. Next to the colonial museums of New Zealand, the finest collection of moa skeletons is to be found at the American Museum in Central Park, which consists of a large number of mounted skeletons of different species, including the giant of them all, the Dinornis giganteus, the skeleton of which stands about ten feet high; this colossal bird, if living and striding along the muddy shore of some sheltered bay, would leave tracks in the mud as huge as those which excite the wonder of the geologist from the triassic sandstone of Connecticut and New Jersey. Other skeletons of the moa may be seen at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and in the Geological Museum of the School of Mines, Columbia College, New York.

While considering the extinct birds of New Zealand, it may not be uninteresting to our readers to turn their attention briefly to the island of Mauritius, the home of the dodo, which is situated about a thousand miles eastward of the coast of Africa, and together with its associated islands presents many features analogous to the life of New Zealand. The Dutch navigators, while making their earlier voyages to the Indies by the new passage around the Cape of Good Hope, found on this uninhabited island large numbers of the clumsy, wingless birds that have received. the name of the dodo. This bird which was related in structure to the pigeons, was of about fifty pounds in weight; being totally incapable of flight and very clumsy, it fell an easy victim to the sailors, who killed it in great numbers. Owing to the persecution of man and also, probably, to the depredations of the animals that accompanied him, the dodo soon became exterminated. The only records of its existence which remain are a few of its bones, and the rude drawings and descriptions in the books of the Dutch navigators, together with two or three pictures supposed to have been painted from life. The dodo furnishes the best-known example of the extermination of a species through the agency of man.

Those who would place the extinction of the moa so far in the past will do well to consider the case of the dodo, that, as we have seen, abounded on its native island scarcely two centuries ago, but of which we now know but little more than we do of the moa.

Madagascar, also, had its huge wingless bird, the Epyornis, that equaled or even exceeded in size the largest of the moas. On the island of Rodriguez another colossal bird, the solitaire, was found, which, like the dodo, has been exterminated by man, and the same fate has befallen other allied birds on the Isle of Bourbon.

It is remarkable that all these huge wingless birds, including also the ostrich and the rhea, are confined to the southern hemisphere, and still more strange that so many of the largest and most interesting of them should be found only on the widelyseparated islands of the Indian and Pacific oceans. When and how they came to those isolated islands, or from what ancient forms of life derived, can only be known when the caves and recent rock formations of those islands shall have been explored, and the fragments of the ancient history of these beings deciphered and translated by the geologist.