ANCIENT BONES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 109, 11 May 1939, Page 12

ANCIENT BONES.

RELICS OF THE MOA. NEW MUSEUM EXHIBIT. DISPLAY OF ALBINO BIRDS. Obtained from a limestone valley at Mangaotaki, near Pio Pk», by the director, Mr. Gilbert Archey, a collection of moa bones is considered the most interesting addition made recently to the exhibits at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Comprising parts of the head, legs and vertebrae of the birds, the bones have been identified as parts of the skeletons of both known types of moa.

Seven albino birds were a recent exhibit at the museum. Starlings, blackbirds and thrushes were included in the collection, which ehowed the various stages of whiteness reached. Other albino birds at present on show are a pure white pheasant, a pure white kiwi, a pure white kingfisher, a partly albino crow and a white pheasant, remarkable for a necklet band of its original colour. Sails of model canoes made from pandaiiiis leavee etitched together have been acquired for the museum by the assistant ethnologist, Mise Olwyn Rutherford, who has just returned from a visit to northern islands in the Gilbert group and Ocean leland. Mies Rutherford also brought back tome ingenious fish trape. Other interesting gifts to the museum ere a Maori ko, a digging stick, and a etrangely-shaped stone found in a swamp at Mount Albert. These were eent by Mre. A. L. Taylor, of Mount Albert. Mm. S. Mason, of Howick, has forwarded a Haiwaiian wooden bowl, obtained by the Rev. Canon Maeon from Oahu leland. A flag given Hone Heke's mother by Lord and Lady Plunket for the Uriotal branch of the Aupouri tribe has been forwarded by the Aupouri people of Fawarenga.