NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17651, 11 December 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

by J. DEriIHOSD, F.L.S., F.Z.S. Mr. J. B. Hamilton, an American citizen who is visiting .New Zealand, ana who became interested in the history oi I the moa, has sent irom \V euiugton a loug letter supporting a theory that the biru became extinct at least a thousand years ago. The enigma ci the mo-t's extinction nas received much attention fiom able students, but it lias not been sausiactoi unsolved. L uUi recently, only slight ana vague allusions were round to tne moa in Maori uadiuoiM. iurtner investigations have brought to light a fairly large tiumuer oi allusions, direct and indirect. A lew years ago, Air. T. W. l)ownes, ot W'angauui, alter going through between 800 and IUCO songs, incantations, luilabies, and proverbs, recorded several relerences to las bird. the oldest is in an ucantation composed by a tonunga, who, it is believed, uved ouiy about ot.e generation ater the Maoris came to New Zea- i land from Hawaikt. Ihe incantation das been handed down from one generation to another. It does not reier to the moa directly, but in it a fatner, addiessing his son, mentions an extinct bird, wnicn, apparently, he intended to show was superior to ail other birds, or at least, was larger. Mr. Downes accepts this as proof mat the moa was extinct in the time oi the tohunga, who composed the incantation, that is, a few years alter the arrival ot the Maori canoes, about 500 years ago. In a lament composed at a later date, there is a reference to people being kuieu •• even as the kura-nui was lost, aesu-oyed by mysterious tires. ' " Kura-ncu, ' is accepted as another name for the moa. In a lament composed on the death of a chief about 1820, that is about twenty years before moa bones were first discovered by Europeans, there is direct reference to the moa and to its extinction. " Hidden art thou, like the extinct moa.'' Mr. H. Beattie, of Gore, who has many old Maori friends in Southland, inquired as to their knowledge of the moa, but his informants usually frankiy admitted that they knew nothing of it. There is a round depression in a rock a few chains below Mataura Falls, known as the moa's nest, bur, this does not carry any conviction as to Southland Maoris having known the bird. A Maori who, while alive, was regarded as the highest authority on Maori lore in the South, told Mr Beat-tie that the moa was extinct when the Maoris came here. The discovery of feathers and pieces of skin in a cave in Central Otago gave colour to the belief that extinction was very recent, but it was shown that in the district in which the skin was found the dry air has remark - markable preservative power, and ' that is dried and protected from the sun might be preserved there for centuries. There is no doubt that the Maoris' ancestors knew the moa, • but apparently- only slightly, otherwise, there would be more reierences to the bird in their songs and traditions. The evidence of Monk's Cave at Sumner, near Christchurch, where moa bones and fragments of egg shell still retaining the shell-membrane were found with Maori carvings and stone implements, is weighty. It is probable that the last of the moas were killed by Maoris, about 500 years ago, but the birds then must have been on the verge of extinction. Nature had almost campleted the work of dismissing them from the universe; man put the finishing touch on it.

There is evidence to show that moas had lived in New Zealand for many thousands of years. Dr. A. R. Wallace believed that they were descendants of. birds of a similar form that lived. in the Northern Hemisphere in "past' ages, and that the direct ancestors-of the moas came southward? through New Guinea and ""Australia to New Zealand. That was when Australia and New Zealand were much closer than they are now, and when j municatiqn, even by flightless birds, was not impossible. He supposed that they swam, or, if they then possessed wings, flew across a straight that was impassable to mammals, which were strangely absent from New Zealand during the moa's regime. A more feasible theory was put forward by the late Captain F. W. Hutton, of Ghristchurch, namely, that the moas originated in New Zealand.- He placed the time as the Eocene period. In any case, they developed extraordinarily. When they -were at the height of their glory, they .roamed ,the land in great flocks. This is shown by the fact that their bones have been found from the far north to the far -south, on mountains 5200 feet high, on inland plains, and on the sea shore. Twelve species are known to have lived in the North Island and seventeen in the South Island. There was nothing, as far as reasoning and conjecture will show, to interfere with their increase. The easy life they were able to lead in a country in which they had no natural enemies is "believed to have been their undoing. They were vegetarians, and as they had abundant supplies of vegetable food within easy, reach, they had no occasion to use their wings, and it is thought that- they first neglected, and then lost the power of flight. Large deposits of moa bones found in swamps are puzzling. They first lead to a supposition that flocks of moas were beset by fires in the forests or in tussock, and that, trying to escape, they rushed into swamps and perished. This theory, which seems fairly obvious when first considered, is discredited bv the fact that, in the. South Island the greatest mortality amongst them was in the Pleistocene period, long before there were human beings in the land. Fires, therefore, could not have been -lighted.-' To meet this difficulty, a suggestion has been made that moas walked into the swamps and perished, or that their dead bodies were washed in. In Pleistocene times probably. New Zealand's climate was much severer than it is now. Long co'd winters were followed by short, hot, and very- wet summers. Captain Hucton, in putting forth this theorv, expressed an opinion that the snow of early winters kiJed many moas and- other birds on the hills, and that the summer floods and avalanches deposited their bodies in the hollows or on low ground at the foot of the hills. Several hundred moa feathers have been ' found, and hundreds of pieces of eggshells. Moas' feathers are not like the feathers of ordinary birds. Thev are soft delicate, and hairy. The supply * good idea of the appearance of the raoa's covering and some species had C rev feathers with white tips, like the feathers of the grey kiwi, found in some parts of the South Island Others had brown feathers. ! with dark shadings, like the feathers of j the North Island kiwi. The largest i species of moa was about twelve feet to the fop of its head. The smallest was about three feet high, and had a round I plump, heavy bodv. .Although its i-« ! were very strong, it had son?* difficult I i'" jetting , over the ground. It probablv waddled along slowly, and swung its fat I i body from side to side when it "tried to go quickly. j The moa is the only bird known to have been absolutely devoid of wing* Th«?re are many flightless birds—the kiwi, the wefea, ana th kakapo are notable instances—but all, unlike the moa. have I wings, of a sort. • The oldest fossil bird I known;-'- the Archeoofeeryx, found in ! Jurassic rock, in Solenhofe'n. Bavaria had exceptionally large, strong wings, and the moas lack of wings is accepted as evidence, not that it was an ancient type of bird, but that it was lazy and sluggish and lost one of the greatest gifts of nature' The moa and the kiwi belong to the same group. The other members are the Australian emu and cossowary, the African ostrich, the South American rhea which are still Jiving, and the" dromornis or Australia and iEpyornis of 3ladagasrar, which, like the moa, are extinct. The' famous dodo of Mauritius, was a huge pigeon. k - It is supposed that the JSpyornis . was the* original of the roc of Marco Polo and the " Arabian 2?ights.^ • ]