437

407

"In 1844, at Wellington," writes Mr. Hamilton, "I was present , as Governor
Fitzroy's private secretary, at a conversation held with a very old Maori, who asserted
that he had seen Captain Cook. Major Richmond, then Superintendant of Wel-
lington, was, I think, also present. I cannot recollect who was the Governor's inter-
preter. This Maori ( Haumatangi), so far as my memory now serves me, I should
guess was 70 years old ; at all events he was brought forward as one of the oldest
of his people then residing about Port Nicholson. Being asked 'Had he ever seen
a Moa ?' he replied, 'Yes he had seen the last one that had been heard of. ' When
questioned as to what it was like, he described it as a very large tall bird, with a neck
like a horse's neck. At the same time he made a long upward stroke in the air with
his right hand, raising it above his head, and so as to suggest a very fair idea of
the shape of a Moa's neck and head, such as I have since seen them in the skeleton
birds of the magnificent collection which Dr. Julius Haast has gathered together in the
Canterbury Museum. There is no bird or animal of large size indigenous to New
Zealand to which an old Maori could liken the Moa. The horse was probably the only
creature imported by us in 1844 in which he could possibly find any kind of likeness
calculated to give us a fair general idea of the shape and height of the bird's neck
and head. If he had never himself seen a Moa, how - unless he had received its
description, handed down from Maoris, who had seen one - could he possibly have hit
upon such an idea as to refer us to the tall arched neck of the horse for a likeness ?
The gesture which he made with his hand remains impressed upon my memory as
freshly as if seen only yesterday, as one that was singularly descriptive. it was like a
sketch being made, as it were, in the air.

Reckoning, by a convenient, though somewhat artificial character, as a first dorsal
the vertebra which first retains its pleurapophyses as independent movable elements,
such as vertebra (the sixteenth), in Dinornis maximus, answers to the eighteenth in
Struthio, of which Prof. Mivart gives two instructive views (1/2 natural size) 2.

I subjoin a corresponding figure (figs. 25, 26), similarly reduced, of the first dorsal
in Dinornis maximus.

If the hypapophysis (fig. 26, hy) be taken as a guide, the present vertebra in Dinornis
would answer to the nineteenth in Struthio, which is the second vertebra in that
genus showing the single medial hypapophysis at this region of the spine, and asso-
ciated with the articular facet, p, for the movable pleurapophysis.

In Dinornis the parapophysis, p, is less produced forward or outward ; the neural
spine, ns, is more elongated and inclines forward ; it is also thicker, more quadrate
in section. In another vertebra it is less elongate than in the figure and less inclined
forward ; the costal surface, also on p, is likewise deeper and is subcircular in shape.

1 "Notes on Maori Traditions of the Moa." by J.W.Hamilton, Esq., 'Transactions of the New-Zealand
Institute,' vol. vii. 1875, p. 121.
2 Loc. cit. p. 408, figs. 40, 41.