having, in many instances, overlapped: thus, rude and finely worked specimens have been, occasionally, found even in Europe so placed as to imply their use by the same population simultaneously. On the supposition, however, that the Palæolithic and Neolithic periods are sufficiently well marked for ordinary purposes of comparison, and bearing in mind that rude as well as polished instruments of stone have been abundantly found in New Zealand, it has been assumed that the people who made and used the former and rudest of them must have belonged to those remote periods; in other words, that there must have been here, as it seems most likely there was once in Europe, a race of men contemporary with the Post-Pleiocene or Mammoth Period. The main argument in favour of this theory rests on the further supposition that all the Moa bones are those of birds extinct for ages, a large number of these remains having been met with in close connection with the flint weapons whereby they were probably slain or cut up. Now, if this be so, it has been further not unreasonably urged that the hunters of the birds must have been contemporaneous with the weapons they used. I ought to add that, with the bones, have been also found a great quantity of the shells of their eggs, as well as the ovens in which they were cooked. Now, no doubt, this theory had a certain consistency so long as it was supposed that most of the bones of the Moas had been found at a depth of many feet under the surface soil, implying, as this circumstance, naturally did, a long lapse of time, since the birds themselves were actually alive on the plains of New Zealand: it was, moreover, asserted that the present people have no traditions of the existence of the bird, which they could not possibly have forgotten. On this point, however, it would seem quite sufficient to remark that the absence of any direct allusion to the Moa in the songs or traditions of the Maoris may just as well have arisen from the probable fact that they were really so familiar with the existence of it, that it would naturally have no place in their traditional lore; while, for the same reason, it would have had none of that peculiar fame among the natives, which the discovery of its remains has aroused among European philosophers. While it lived, the abundant relics of it recently met with shew clearly enough that it could not have been at all rare; and when it perished, perhaps, not very long before the present generation, it simply ceased to be talked about. In making this statement, however, I must not be supposed to deny that Moa bones of considerable antiquity do, from time to time, turn up; I only affirm that that they have not remained long enough in the soil to lose all their albumen and to have been thus converted into true fossils.