THE MOA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 13 December 1926, Page 3

THE MOA.

DOMESTICATING THE KIWI. Most of us are familiar with the story of how the natives of Patagonia domesticated the giant sloth. Now comes the belief that men just as wild as th© Patagonians, the ancestors of the Maori race, tamed in some inconceivable way the greatest of birds, the New Zealand moa. The theory, of course, cannot be positively proved, as all living testimony has been destroyed, but the person whose knowledge of the subject is greater than any other —Mr W. W. Smith for many years curator of the beautiful Pukekura Park at New Plymouth, New Zealand, finds sufficient evidence to justify him, he believes, in making this remarkable statement (writes Keith Impett in the Melbourne Herald). Mr Smith, though now an old man, is an active personage, who has made frequent expeditions to collect the remains of moas, and many scientific collections of the Dominion are enriched by his careful labours. He has for ever dispelled the old belief that the moa became extinct before the Maoris reached this country, for he found the disused Maori earth ovens in close association with the great deposits of moa bones, and lying with them the jade axes and other weapons used for the killing and cutting up of the monsters. He has had through his hands skeletons of moas which perished in the mountains, overtaken by sudden floods in the swamps. Wherever skeletons were found he searched, and wtihout execution always encountered little heaps of brightly polished stones, some two and more inches long, the stones having been swallowed by the birds to serve as .millstones for the grinding ut> of- their food. ° In the Albury district, in the South Island of Neiv Zealand, are caves in which moa-hunters dwelt for ages, and on the walls can be clearly discerned their rough, rude drawings. The sketches depict the moa as it.wa.a in life, its eggs, and so on, all indicating an intimate knowledge of the biTd and its habits.' From wbat he has seen in these caves, Mr Smith is satisfied that the natives domesticated the moa as we domesticate fowls! There were, several species of moas, from the giants standing 14ft and 16ft in height to much smaller ones, and naturally it does not follow that the larger birds were always those successfully managed in this way. The theory, although ouite new. is not in the least inconceivable. The only survivor of the moas in the world to-'day is the kiwi, the small, wingless, long-beaked bird, which, with a single blow from its powerful feet can rip open the flesh of a dog. As scientists were at first unable to convince the rest of the world that there had been such birds as the moa, so there was a general disbelief in the existence of the kiwi.

The kiwi is both timorous and fierce, mortally afraid of man and all his works, running madly to destruction in the presence of the first fire it finds in the bush- However, Mr Smith has a fine narrative ready if one is fortunate enough to. engage him in earnest conversation.

Having secured a hen kiwi, he sought a mate for her. The female is larger than the male, and this fastidious lady, not liking her lover, attacked and almost killed him, ignoring his advances completely. A second was sought, and he suffered almost as sound a thrashing before’the termagant admitted him to her good graces. Then they settled down to-. peaceful comoany, and in due course the hen laid two eggs. To receive those the henpecked little male dug a deepish pit. and then when the eggs came buried them for about a third of their depth, and sat on them night and day for four whole weeks.- Madame Kiwi disdainfully took no notice of ' the _ development. Snddenlv a downy kiwi, as i small as a man’s fist, with a. preposterous long beak, ed a day later by a second from the other egg Like all wingless birds, the baby kiwis ran about .to. feed iust as soon as they were hatched ; hut the mother bird row assumed charge of them, the poor father being reduced to a ruckle of bones that it took him all his time to feed himself hack to prosperity. As Darwin used to stand in the woods and let the baby squirrels gallop up and down his back, so Mr Smith would sit in the gloom of the place where the kiwis had been hatched and allow' them' to march all over him. prodding him the while as if he were- the stump of an old tree. The . ouestion at present worrying Mr Smith is that if he can domesticate the smallest of the moas with his limited opportunities, why should ’ilr»t the Maoris, with two or, three centuries of knowledge, have tayned the great- moa ?