MOA’S; EGG

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1933, Page 9

MOA’S; EGG

MOLYNEUX RIVER FIND. INCIDENT OF 21 YEARS AGO. On a winter's day, after a heavy fall of snow, a young rabbiter, whose name is unknown, examined his traps on a fiver terrace above the Molyneux River, near Ettrick, Otago, writes Mr. James Drummond, F.C.S., F.Z.5.,; in the Christchurch Star. While crossing the sncw-coverea ground he noticed a small slip on a hillside which had caused .the collapse of an old natural Maori drain. He stooped to examine large pieces of egg-shells, and was surprised to see a perfect egg embedded in the fresh ground. With care, he took it out undamaged. As he moved it, in order to examine it more closely, he heard a rattling inside, and concluded that it contained an embryo chick, but this point has not been definitely settled. Taking the egg to Dunedin, he offered it to Mr. Charles Bills, a bird dealer, who introduced many foreign birds to New Zealand. Mr. Bills declined to buy the egg, but offered to sell it on a commission basis. As the Otago Museum could not afford to buy it, the egg was offered to Mr. G. C. Thomson. He bought it for £55, and kept it in his office in Bond Street, Dunedin, until a few years ago, when he presented it to the Otago Museum, where it rests side by side with a perfect egg which, during a flood, floated into the well of an Earnscjeugty dredge on the bank of the Molyneux. An interesting point of law arose as to who was the rightful- owner of the Earnscleugh egg—the proprietor of the farm, the owner of the dredge, or the man who found it. Sir Frederick Chapman told Mr. Lindsay Buick-that, although the matter never came into Court, there was much searching . of musty law books. The result was- a compromise, greatly in favour of the man who found the egg.