1867 - von Hochstetter, Ferdinand. New Zealand - CHAPTER IX: Kiwi and Moa, the wingless Birds of New Zealand

[Image of page 173]

CHAPTER IX,

Kiwi and Moa, the wingless Birds of New Zealand.

The family of the ostrich-like birds (Struthionidae) can boast not only of the most marvellous forms, wholly different from the common type of birds, but also of by far the largest representatives of the "feathery tribe". Therefore they are also called giant-birds (Proceri). They are birds with short, rudimentary wings, which are totally unfit for flying. The muscular power, which nature has to dispose of in this case, would not have sufficed to keep the bulk of such birds in the air. Hence the bones are almost without air-cells, the breastbone is a convex plate without ridge, the muscles of the breast are thin; their plumage is loose and flabby; the feathers light and shaggy, resembling hair. Instead, however, the muscles of the upper and lower thighs are of unusual strength and thickness, the feet are long and most fully developed for running, with two or three toes having a callous sole.

[Image of page 174]

The types of this remarkable family of birds all belong to the southern hemisphere. Only the African ostrich, the original home of which is probably also to be looked for South of the Equator, has in course of time spread into the northern hemisphere. They are, as it were, the pachyderms among the birds, and it is especially upon the limited territories of the islands of the southern hemisphere, -- which are too small to sustain large mammalia, -- that they take their place in every respect; but they die out, where-ever they come in contact with man.

But few traces of them have as yet been found in the older strata of the earth, which might enable us to infer the existence of this bird-family in the periods of the earth previous to the appearance of man. All that can be adduced in proof of this, are tracks found in the New Red Sandstone of Connecticut, North America. If those so-called Ornithichnites are really impressions made by birds, they, indeed, betoken the existence of birds of a colossal size, the paces of which measured five feet, and which by their weight pressed the mud up from the ground, as though elephants had boon wading about in it. Recently Professor Owen has described the remains of a fossil bird (Gastornis Parisiensis Hebert) from eocen strata of Paris. This excepted, whatever is known of giant birds, belongs to the present world, although many a species has long ago succumbed in its struggle with man, and vanished again from the stage of actual life.

The number of species living is very small. In all there are only about 12 species known; two, perhaps three species of ostrich in Africa, three cassuary species 1 in southern Asia, two Emu's (Dromaeus) in Australia, an East and a West Australian, three species Rhea in South America, and three or four species of Kiwi (Apteryx) in New Zealand. Among all these the African ostrich, 6 to 7 feet high, is known to be by far the largest and most numerous species.

But greater than the number of living species is the number

[Image of page 175]

of extinct species, which used to inhabit the islands from Madagascar to New Zealand even within the memory of man; and it is among these that we become acquainted with by far the largest representatives of the family of giant birds.

Marco Polo already, in the famous account of his travels, locates the giant bird Rue of the myth upon Madagascar, and relates that the Great Khan of the Tartars having heard of this bird at the far off borders of the celestial empire, sent forthwith messengers to Madagascar. They really brought a feather back with them, 9 spans long, and 2 palms in circumference, at which His Majesty expressed his unfeigned delight. People laughed at this tale, as a fable, and like so many other relations made by Marco Polo on real facts, it was declared vain swaggering talk; -- until tidings came establishing the fact, that very recently a gigantic bird was, and is still existing in Madagascar. This happened thus: Natives of Madagascar had come to Mauritius to buy rum; the vessels they had brought with them to hold the liquor were egg-shells, eight times as large as ostrich-eggs, or 135 times the size of a hen-egg; eggs containing 2 gallons. They related that those eggs were now and then found among the reeds, and that the bird also was occasionally seen. This was not believed either until the Museum at Paris in 1851 received such an egg from a landslip in Madagascar, measuring 2 3/4 feet in circumference, and holding 2 1/2 litres; it was in a state as though it had been laid but very recently. Now Marco Polo's fabulous Rue has become the Aepiornis maximus of Madagascar. Yet that colossal egg, the casts of which are exhibited in almost every Museum in Europe, besides some fragments of bones in the British Museum, is all, that has hitherto been obtained of this bird. Whether it still lives, is uncertain. The natives assert to this day, that in the thickest forest, there still exists a giant bird; but that it is very rarely seen.

East of Madagascar, upon the Mascarene Islands (Bourbon, Mauritius, Rodriguez), -- from the bones collected by Mr. Bartlett upon Rodriguez in 1855, there are three species known, the Dronte or Dodo (Didus ineptus), the Solitaire (Pezophaps) and a new, much

[Image of page 176]

larger bird. All are extinct; but concerning the former two, it has been proved, that they lived in great numbers on those islands till within the 16. and 17. centuries. Even as late as 1638 a live Dodo was exhibited in England, the skin of which was afterwards transferred to the famous Museum of John Tradescant. At a revision of this Museum in 1775 by the trustees, the damaged specimens were condemned among the rubbish, and unfortunately also the Dronte; the head and feet were all that was saved of it, and these parts, the only remnants of the extraordinary animal, are now exhibited as a great curiosity in the Asmolean Museum in Oxford. 2

Yet, whatever had been heard, known and collected of ostrich-like birds, was far surpassed by the discovery of the Moas and Kiwis of New Zealand. There, both forms were found united, dwarf forms, such as they had never been known heretofore, and giant forms, such as they had been merely sketched by fancy; of New Zealand alone there are now already nearly as many species known as of all the rest of the globe.

In 1812 the first skin of a Kiwi was brought to England. The Zoologists were at a loss, what to make of the strange bird. It was named by Dr. Shaw Apteryx australis, the wingless Australian bird; it next passed into the collection of the late Lord Derby, but not until after many years, in 1833 -- at that time unique -- was it described by Mr. Yarrell. Thus a dwarf form had become known, a bird, not larger than a hen, without wings and without tail, four toes on its foot, with a long bill resembling that of a snipe, the body covered with long brown feathers resembling hair. The skins of this bird brought to Europe, were sold for 200 and 300 francs a piece; they were considered the greatest rarities, the more so, as it was believed that the bird was almost extinct. It has, however, been exterminated only in the inhabited parts of New Zealand, while it is a fact, that in the primitive forests of the mountain regions there are up to this day great numbers of

[Inserted page]

Kiwi (Apteryx) and Moa (Palapteryx),
the wingless birds of New Zealand.

[Image of page 177]

them living; of course, disappearing rapidly even there, as man advances to subdue the land. 3 There appears to be evidence of the present existence of three or four species of the genus Apteryx in New Zealand. 4

The above mentioned Apteryx Australis was the first species made known to science. The original specimen in 1812 was obtained by Captain Barklay of the ship "Providence", and is stated to have come from Dusky Bay in the Province of Otago, South Island. Some time afterwards a second specimen from the same locality was procured by Dr. Mantell and examined more closely by Mr. Bartlett. This specimen became the property of the British Museum. All the other specimens exhibited in the European collections as Apteryx australis come from the North Island, and belong to the species described by Mr. Bartlett as Apteryx Mantelli. In fact, this very common species is so closely allied to the Apt. australis as to render it very desirable, that additional specimens of the later should be obtained and a rigid comparison instituted between the two.

The Apteryx Mantelli 5 is, as far we are now informed, confined to the North Island. This bird differs from the original Apteryx australis of Dr. Shaw, in its smaller size, its darker and more rufous colour, its longer tarsus, which is scutellated in front, its shorter toes and claws, which are horn-coloured; its smaller wings, which have much stronger and thicker quills; and also in having long straggling hairs on the face. In the northern districts of the Northern Island this species of Apteryx appears to have become quite extinct. But in the island called Houtourou, or Little Barrier Island, a small island, completely wooded, rising about

[Image of page 178]

1000 feet above the sea level, and only accessible when the sea is quite calm, which is situated in the Gulf of Hauraki, near Auckland, it is said to be still tolerably common. In the inhabited portions of the southern districts of the Northern Island also, it has become nearly exterminated by men, dogs, and wild cats, and is only to be found here in the more inaccessible and less populous mountain-chains, that is in the wooded mountains between Cape Palliser and East Cape. It is therefore not so easily obtained as we might suppose. Dieffenbach already mentions that during an 18 months' stay in New Zealand (1840--1841), despite the rewards he promised the natives everywhere, he succeeded in obtaining but one skin, and that in Mongonui Harbour, North of the Bay of Islands, from a European settler. I fared no better. I travelled through many a district on North Island, where according to the statements of the natives the bird still exists and is occasionally caught, but despite all my efforts was unable to procure a single specimen. 6 Of the attempts hitherto made to bring the peculiar bird alive to Europe, only one, to my knowledge, has proved successful. 7 In the Zoological Garden in London there has been since 1852 a live hen-kiwi, which is fed with mutton and worms. Its daily rations are half a pound of mutton, and it has already laid a number of barren eggs. The bird weighing not more than four pounds and a-half, lays an egg weighing 14 1/4 oz. and of an astonishing size. Taking this as a criterion, it is to be supposed, that the New Zealand Moas laid eggs as colossal as the famous egg of the giant-bird of Madagascar.

There is as yet no second species of Kiwi known to exist on North Island. But the natives speak of sorts of Kiwi, which they

[Image of page 179]

distinguish as Kiwi-nui (large Kiwi) and Kiwi-iti (small Kiwi). The Kiwi-nui is said to be found in the Tuhua district, West of Lake Taupo, and is in my opinion Apteryx Mantelli. Kiwi-iti may possibly be Apteryx Owenii, though I can give no certain information on this subject.

Apteryx Owenii, 8 the third species, somewhat smaller than the former two species and with grayish plumage, was first described by Mr. Gould in 1847, from a specimen procured by Mr. F. Strange and believed to have been obtained from South Island. The four specimens in the British Museum most certainly come from the South; and during my stay in the Province of Nelson, I had an opportunity to convince myself with my own eyes, that this species is still quite frequent in the spurs of the Southern Alps on Cook Strait. Some natives I met in Collingwood on Golden Bay, upon a promise of £5 agreed to go out kiwi-hunting for me; and, in fact, after only three days they brought me two living specimens of Apteryx Owenii, male and female, which they had caught close by the sources of the Rocky and Slate rivers, tributaries of the Aorere river, at a height of 3000 feet above the level of the sea. I kept them for several weeks alive in a hen-coop in Nelson, until one fine morning the male made its escape; the female I brought with me preserved in spirits. 9 When Mr. Skeet in 1861 examined the mountains between the Takaka and Buller rivers in the Province of Nelson, he found in the grassy ridges on the East side of Owen river such numbers of these Kiwis, that with the aid of two dogs he could catch 15 to 20 of them every night. He and his men lived on kiwi-meat, and the range they called kiwi-range. Also in the Wairau ranges East of Blind Bay (Prov. Marlborough) Kiwis are said to be still quite frequent, and as far as my individual experience goes, it is here also the species Apteryx Owenii, which consequently is the common Kiwi of the northern portion of South Island.

[Image of page 180]

Besides Apteryx Owenii, however, a second larger species lives on the Middle Island, of which, although no examples have yet reached Europe, the existence is nevertheless quite certain. The natives distinguish the species not as a Kiwi, but as a Roa, because it is larger than A. Owenii (Roa meaning long or tall). The existence of such a bird in the South Island has long since been affirmed, and though no specimen of it has yet reached Europe, it has been registered as Apteryx maxima. 10 What I am able to state on this subject, is the following: Mr. John Rochfort, Provincial Surveyor in Nelson, who returned from an expedition to the western coast of the province while I was staying at Nelson, in his report, which appeared in the Nelson Examiner, of August 24th, 1859, describes this species, which is said to be by no means uncommon in the Paparoa ranges, between the Grey and Buller rivers, in the following terms: a Kiwi about the size of a turkey, very powerful, having spurs on his feet, which, when attacked by a dog, defends himself so well as frequently to come off victorious. My friend, Julius Haast, writes to me in a letter, dated July, 1860, from ten miles above the mouth of the river Buller, on the mountains of the Buller chain, which at the height of from 3000 to 4000 feet, were at that time, it being winter in New Zealand, slightly covered with snow, that the tracks of a large Kiwi of the size of a turkey were very common in the snow, and that at night he had often heard the singular cry of this bird, but that as he had no dog with him he had not succeeded in getting a specimen of it.

Only very little is known of the mode of living of the Apteryx. They are night-birds, hiding themselves in day-time under the root-stocks of forest-trees, and going in search of food exclusively in the night-time. They feed upon insects, grubs, worms and the seeds of various plants. 11 They live in pairs. The hen lays but one egg, which is hatched, as the natives say, by the male and female

[Image of page 181]

alternately. The male is larger than the female and has a longer bill. They can run and hop very fast. The female Apteryx, which I kept for several days alive in my room in Nelson, hopped very readily over objects two or three feet high. Dogs and cats are, next to man, the most dangerous enemies of the bird. The natives, by imitating its call, -- at night, of course, -- know how to call it up to them, and to confound it by a sudden glare of torch-light, so that they can either catch it with the hand or kill it with a stick. Dogs also are used in kiwi-hunting.

The Kiwi, however, is only the last and rather insignificant representative of the family of wingless birds that inhabited New Zealand in bygone ages. By the term "Moa" 12 the natives signify a family of birds, that we know merely from bones and skeletons, a family of real giant-birds compared with the little Apterygides.

Missionaries were the first that beared from the natives of those gigantic birds, against which the ancestors of the present Maoris had been engaged in fearful struggles. The natives even pointed out a Totara tree on Lake Rotorua as the place, where their ancestors slew the last Moa, and in order to corroborate the truth of their narrative they showed large bones, which they found scattered on the banks of rivers, on the sea-coast, in swamps and limestone-caves, as the remains of those extinct giant-birds.

In 1839, Mr. Rule brought to England a fragment of a thigh bone of a Moa, from which Professor Richard Owen drew up a wonderfully correct idea of the bird. Almost at the same time the Rev. Mr. Colenso described in the Tasmanian Journal Moa-bones as the remains of gigantic birds. These facts excited interest and caused fresh researches, in consequence of which the Missionary, the Rev. W. Williams in 1842 sent several chests full of such bones, -- which had been gathered on North Island in the coast districts about Poverty Bay and Hawkes' Bay, -- to Dr. Buckland. Dr. Buckland

[Image of page 182]

presented the treasures to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Prof. Owen constructed out of them the gigantic legs of Dinornis giganteus, which are one of the greatest curiosities of said Museum, legs over 5 feet high, which intimate a bird of at least 91/2 feet in height. 13 This is by far the most colossal from all the birds known. The tibia, the shin-bone alone, measures 2 feet 10 inches.

Upon South Island it was Mr. Percy Earl and Dr. Mackellar, who made collections at the mouth of the Waikouaiti, North of the Otago peninsula. But by far the most copious harvest was that gathered by Mr. Walther Mantell in the years 1847-1850 upon North and South Islands. He had collected more than 1000 separate bones and also fragments of eggs, which were bought by the British Museum, and furnished Prof. Owen the rich material for this celebrated works on the extinct families of Dinornis and Palapteryx. In this collection there was the famous skeleton of the elephant-footed Moa (Dinornis elephantopus) from Ruamoa, three; miles South of Oamaru Point (First Rocky Head), Province Otago, a species, which while it fell far short of the height of Dinornis giganteus, -- measuring hardly over 5 feet, -- was distinguished by an extraordinarily massive construction of the bones, and, as Mr. Owen says and indicates by the nomenclature, of all birds represents most the type of the pachyderms. Very appropriately, therefore, this skeleton has been placed in the British Museum by the side of the gigantic elephant Mastodon ohioticus.

Colonel Wakefield, Dr. Thomson and many others have also made up collections partly on North, and partly on South Island, 14 and according to Prof. Owen there are already 12 to 14 different species of Moas known. 15 Most of them have three toes like the

[Image of page 183]

Australian Emu. These Prof. Owen classes with the genus Dinornis, the four-toed species with the genus Palapteryx. From smaller bones, which were found, the genus Aptornis was established. However, the whole family of those wingless birds seems to have been very variable, since nearly every individual found, varied not only in size, but also in the number and proportion of the bones (especially of the vertebrae). It is, therefore, very doubtful, whether all the species, distinguished by Prof. Owen, are good species.

Besides bones, there were also fragments of egg-shells found on North and South Islands, indicating eggs of a size much larger than ostrich-eggs, but not quite equal in size to the egg of Aepiornis maximus, and of a thin shell with linear furrows. In 1865, Mr. J. C. Stevens, Natural History Agent in London, received from New Zealand an almost perfect egg of Dinornis. The egg is about ten inches in length and seven inches in breadth, the shell being of a dirty brownish colour, and about 1/12th of an inch in thickness. According to the Wellington papers, the egg was discovered in digging the foundation of a house at Kaikoras (Prov. Marlborough) enclosed in a small mound, supposed to be a native burying place, as a human skeleton, buried in a sitting posture, was found within the grave holding the egg in its hands. This interesting relic was offered for public sale on November 24th. A bona fide bid of £115 was actually made, but it was bought in at £125. 16 Besides bones and eggs, little heaps of small rounded stones are very frequently found, generally chalcedony, carnelions, opals, and achates, which are designated by the natives as "Moa stones". They are sometimes found together with Moa skeletons, partly also in places, where there are no traces of Moa bones. It is probably correct to suppose that those stones come from the stomach of the birds, which like the ostrich and the Australian Emu were in the habit of swallowing little stones to assist digestion, ejecting them again from time to time, in order to swallow others less rounded.

[Image of page 184]

I recollect with much pleasure the grand impression, the sight of those Moa bones made upon me, when for the first time I entered the halls of the famous North gallery, of the British Museum. It was a few weeks before the departure of the Novara. Among the islands of the South Sea, which we were to visit, the name of New Zealand was also registered. Ever since that time I cherished the hope, that I might be able to fetch from New Zealand similar treasures; and happily I did not fail in my exspectations, although I suffered much disappointment at the beginning' of my researches.

Upon North Island I had scoured every district, that had been noted for the occurrence of Moa bones, I had ransacked all the so-called Moa caves, but all in vain. The Moa enthusiasts, that had been there before me, had carried off the last fragment of a Moa bone, and the Maoris on having discovered, that they could make some money by it, had gathered whatever there was still to be found, and sold it to European amateurs at enormous prices. The only relic I at least found out, was in the possession of a chief in the Tuhua district, who produced from the dust and rubbish of his raupo-hut an old bone, which he had hidden for a long time, and with which he parted only after lengthy negotiations. It was the pelvis of a small species. In addition I procured a smoked leg-bone -- likewise of a small species -- which from all appearances had served as a club for a long time.

Upon South Island I had better luck, and that in the very last months of my stay in New Zealand. It was upon the goldfields of Nelson on the Aorere river that I heard from diggers of a cave very recently discovered, in which the almost perfect skeleton of a colossal bird had been found, and in which, as the report went, there were still numbers of bones so strong, as to require the utmost effort to break and shatter them. I was conducted to the cave, and after a short search I had the pleasure of exhuming some fragments of bones from the loam at the bottom of the cave. I at once ordered a thorough search of the cave, leaving it to my friend and fellow-traveller, Dr. Julius Haast, and a

[Image of page 185]

young English surveyor, Mr. Maling, to do their best for Moa digging. My services being required on the goldfields and coalfields of the district I could not indulge in the pleasure of forming one of the party of the Moa diggers. In the town of Collingwood, we had appointed a rendezvous after three days; at the expiration of which my friends came in triumphant, conducting oxen, decked with flowers and heavily laden with Moa bones, amid the concurse of the whole population of Collingwood. Dr. Haast had scoured three caves. 17 They occur in a tertiary lime-stone on the right bank of the Aorere river, about eight miles above its mouth near Washbourne Flat, a small gold-digger colony. In the northern-most cave, Stafford's Cave, -- through which a rivulet flows, forming at its outlet the Doctor's Creek, -- nothing was found. The more surprising was the result of the diggings in the other two caves, which Haast named

Caves with Moa bones in the Aorere Valley.
a. Staffords-Cave; b. Hochstetter's Cave; c. Moa-Cave; m. places, where Moa-bones were found.

Hochstetter's Cave (the same, that I had visited myself) and Moa Cave. The bones lay partly quite on the surface, covered only by a few inches of loam, partly under stalactite incrustations. Very remarkable is the fact, established during the diggings in the Moa

The Cave glow-worm.
a. Natural size. b. The phosphorescent part magnified.

[Image of page 186]

Cave, that the remains of Dinornis didiformis presenting a very recent appearance were always on the top, while the bones of Dinornis elephantopus were dug from a deeper stratum, sometimes from under stalactite three feet thick, and in a half-fossil state like mammoth bones, so that it almost seems as though the different species of those colossal birds had not all lived contemporaneous. Nor were the bones of the various individual birds piled up pell-mell so that they might be supposed to have been carried piecemeal together; but the skeletons lay there whole, each bone in its proper place, the phalanges of the several toes together, next the legs, than the

Section through the Moa-Cave in the Aorere Valley; a. Bed with Din. didiformis, b. Bed with Din. elephantopus, c. Stalactite, d. Limestone.

pelvis, the ribs and the breastbone, finally the vertebral column with the skull and the bill; even the rings of the bronchial artery were in their proper place; and where the stomach had been, the "Moa stones" were found. From these facts it is evident that the birds died in those caves, which served them as a hiding-place. Unfortunately, however, several of those bones were so rotten that they crumbled to pieces on being taken out, and notwithstanding the utmost caution used in handling them, the skeletons could not be preserved perfect.

The collections, which my friends brought to Collingwood, contained bones of ten different individual birds, belonging to six or seven species, among them also Kiwi bones. 18 This collection was increased moreover by the addition of the skeleton first found, -- a nearly perfect skeleton of Palapteryx ingens, -- which the finders had presented to the Nelson Museum. The trustees of said Museum, in their turn, destined it as a most valuable present to the Museum of the Imperial Geological Institution at Vienna, where it is at present exhibited. My friend Dr. G. Jaeger has devoted

[Image of page 187]

himself to the difficult task of restoring the original skeleton and to multiplying it by plaster-casts.

Kiwi-like Moa. Palapteryx ingens. Front of the skeleton.

The bones of this skeleton of Palapteryx ingens, -- a species of which only rudiments were known heretofore, -- are those of a young not quite fully-grown individual, since the last rib-bearing vertebra is not solidly connected with the pelvis. The height of the restored skeleton in plaster-cast, as it stands, is 6 1/2 feet to the top of the head. This is the average height of an ostrich. A grown specimen, however, might have been taller by about 1/6th of the whole. The original bones required nearly all a more or less thorough repair before a cast could be made of them; and various wanting parts, such as the femura, had first to be modelled after corresponding parts of other individuals. The pelvis especially was in a very deficient state of preservation and has been imitated for the most part from the pelvis of Dinornis didiformis, which I had brought with me from North Island. Of the skull also there was only a fragment left. However, I was fortunate enough to find in the same cave, from which the respective bones had been dug, a very well preserved skull of a quite recent appearance, which probably belonged to another, older specimen, but, as was seen on comparing it with said fragment, doubtless to a specimen of the same species. Even the little bones in the auditory passage and the bony shell of the nose are preserved

[Image of page 188]

in this skull. Only the lower jaw had to be supplemented from fragments. This skull served as a model in the construction of the skeleton.

Without entering upon osteological details, I remark here, that the massive structure of the posterior extremities and the open pelvis, -- the ossa pub-is are not grown together, -- as well as

Kiwi-like Moa. Palapteryx ingens. Side-view of the skeleton.

the number of toes are the most striking peculiarities, distinguishing this skeleton from that of an ostrich. Palapteryx ingens had a fourth hind-toe like the Kiwi, and is thereby distinguished from the Dinornis species. On the other hand, the fore-extremities are very rudimentary, so that even wings such as the ostrich has, are entirely out of question. The front-edge of the breast-bone has two small impressions, fitting to rudimentary bones, scarcely two inches long; shoulder-blade and wing-bones wore probably wholly wanting.

The construction of the plaster-model was a difficult task, requiring much patience and mechanical skill. It is erected without a visible support; the iron stags passing through the leg-bones, and thus giving the skeleton that position, which the living bird had naturally to take so as to balance the bulk of its body upon its feet. The center of gravity in the body lies in the middle of the breast; therefore the hip-joint cannot

[Image of page 189]

be the axis for the equilibrium of the bird, but this axis must pass through the centre of the body and can only rest in the knee-joints, which must be so placed, that the line connecting them, passes through the middle of the breast. If this be the case, the femura must not take a vertical or slanting position in the direction upward from the knee-joint to the hip-joint; but they must be made so as to incline slightly from the knee-joint towards the hip-joint. By this arrangement, the skeleton, of course, loses part of the imposing height, that might be given it by a more vertical position of the femura.

The whole work deserves to be designated as a master-piece, highly creditable to Dr. Jaeger, and to Mr. Magniani, the artist who was engaged in executing it; a result, to which we are the more induced to tender our unfeigned acknowlegments, as by this complete plaster-cast of the skeleton of a New Zealand Moa, a lasting monument has been secured to the Novara Expedition in the numerous Museums at home and abroad.

We now arrive at the most interesting question: how, where and when did the Moas live, and what are the causes of their being extinct?

From the localities of Moa bones, hitherto discovered, 19 it appears first, that those birds were distributed over North Island, as well as South Island. Yet, as the Apteryx species of the two islands are different, so also the Moa species of North Island seem to be different from those found on South Island. Cook Strait, now separating the two islands, may have proved to these birds, which could neither fly nor swim, an unsurmountable obstacle, preventing them from migrating from one island to the other. New Zealand was perhaps a large continent when the Moas were first created. And if we suppose this or at least that the two islands were formerly contiguous to each other, we of course suppose also, that the separation took place so long a time ago, that the originally identical species, after the separation of both islands, may have been changed in course of time into the present varieties or species.

[Image of page 190]

According to Prof. Owen, the birds of South Island present stouter proportions, a compact, rather bulky frame of body, such as Dinornis robustus, elephantopus, crassus, and Palapteryx ingens, while those of North Island are distinguished by more slender and lengthy forms, like the Dinornis giganteus and gracilis.

These various species inhabited the plains and valleys and had their hiding-places in forests and caves. Their food doubtless consisted of vegetables, especially fern-roots, which they dug up with their powerful feet and claws. To assist the process of digestion, they swallowed small pebbles. According to native tradition, Moas were decked with gaudy plumage; and the present New Zealanders describe a cochin-china fowl as what they conceive lo have been the shape and the appearance of Moas. The formation of the skull leads us to infer, that they were stupid, clumsy birds, which we must not suppose to have been swift runners like the ostrich, but sluggish diggers of the ground, the nature and habits of which demanded no larger scope, than such as the limited territory of New Zealand presented.

Most Moa bones still contain 10 to 30 per cent of organic (gelatinous) substance, and are not even in the state called semi-fossil. 20 Only the bones that had been lying deeper in the loam of the caves, are in a half fossil state, similar to the mammoth-bones (Elephas primigenius) found in Europe in post-tertiary deposits. The almost undecomposed state of the bones, their occurrence in the sands of the sea-shore, in swamps, forests, river beds, and in limestone caves, together with bones of animals still living in New Zealand, 21 all this proves beyond the shadow of a doubt, that those birds belong to the recent period of the earth, and that their age can only be counted by hundreds, instead of thousands of years. From the traditions of the natives it appears, that great numbers of Moas were still living upon the islands at the time when they were first populated, and that the last of those birds

[Image of page 191]

probably disappeared from the surface of the earth but a few generations ago. 22 It is even rumoured in the colony and is certainly not utterly impossible, that in unaccessible solitudes there might still be some few living stragglers of that giant-family "the last of the Mohicans". 23 However, I am not inclined to believe the stories of the natives, that Heretaunga in the vicinity of Ahuriri on the East Coast of North Island or Whakapunake on Poverty Bay is the haunt of the last living Moas; and I likewise discredit the assertions of American sailors and seal-hunters, who pretend to have seen monster-birds of 14 or 16 and even of 20 feet in height stalking to and fro on Cloudy Bay and on the inhospitable southwestern shores of South Island. And certainly it is a remarkable fact, that in those extensive, wholly uninhabited regions of the Southern Alps, which within the last years have been explored, no reliable traces 24 could be found anywhere. It is therefore my opinion, that all the larger species are wholly extinct, and that the above mentioned Roa-roa (Apteryx maxima) is probably the largest living representative of the former giant-family.

To the question about the causes of the dying out of those

[Image of page 192]

gigantic birds, we must necessarily connect the question about the causes of the final extermination of other large animals of the present period. It is in the "struggle of life", that we are to seek the clue to the solution of this problem.

There are many facts, showing that in the struggle for existence, man acts the main part; that man has already swept quite a number of species from the surface of the earth, and that it is chiefly the largest animals that first succumb. We may even say, that all the larger animals are gradually being exterminated excepting those, which as domestic animals save their existence merely by their absolute dependence on man. The reasons for this arc quite obvious. The animal is either useful or noxious to man. If it be a large animal, its useful or noxious qualities are the greater; and in both cases man will strive to kill the beast, either in order to secure to himself the benefits of it, or to avert the great damage. This struggle of extermination will last a longer or shorter time, according to the number of individuals engaged, or, -- since in the case of large animals, it can be only comparatively small upon a given space, -- in proportion to the greater or smaller area of distribution of the animals in question. The huge animals once populating the forests of Europe, furnish a great many examples and proofs, too well known to require any further explanation. I will mention only two facts to show, how rapidly often the struggle is brought to a close with species having only a very limited range of distribution, how little there remains of such animals exterminated by the hand of man, and how fast every thing relating thereto is forgotten.

About the middle of the eighteenth century, during Behring's second voyage, in 1741, the Zoologist Steller discovered on the coast of Behring's Island near Kamtshatka a colossal seacow, the Rhytina Stelleri, great numbers of which lived on that coast. Its body weighed 80 cwts.; and the savoury meat and the lard being great inducements to give it chase, as early as 1768 already the last specimen is said to have been killed. Consequently twenty-seven short years sufficed to sweep the last trace of that animal from

[Image of page 193]

the earth. Notwithstanding the general and diligent search for it, and the considerable rewards offered, not a vestige has since been discovered of this animal; man has destroyed it; a jaw and a skull-fragment preserved in the Petersburg Museum are the only relics left us, and but for the description of the zoologist Steller who was shipwrecked on the coast of Kamshatka, we should be utterly in the dark as to the animal in question. 25 But if we were to ask the seal-hunters and whale-fishers on those coasts, they would certainly reply that they had never heard of such an animal.

Almost as quickly was the Dronte or Dodo exterminated. The sailors of the Dutch Admiral Wybrand of Warwyck, whose vessel was stranded upon the coast of Mauritius, in 1598, commenced the war of extermination. Although they were utterly disgusted with the meat, -- they, therefore, called those birds Walgh-birds, i.e. loathsome birds, -- and although the whole crew, half-famished as they were, could not consume over two birds at one meal, yet the stupid, clumsy creatures were killed by scores. Already in 1607, the merchant Paulus van Soldt reported that the number of those birds was greatly decreasing on the coast; his crew also, subsisted for 23 days on nothing but drontes and some few tortoises. In 1681 the bird is mentioned for the last time, and the researches instituted on the spot by Bory St. Vincent in the beginning of the present century have shown, that upon that island the memory of those marvellous birds had entirely disappeared even from tradition,

Nor is it to be doubted, that the extermination of the gigantic birds of New Zealand was chiefly accomplished by the hand of man. In briefly retracing the past to the times when New Zealand was not yet trodden by the foot of man, we must assume, that at that time the large Dinornis and Apteryx species, whose bones we find to-day, lived in great numbers upon open fern-land, subsisting on the roots of Pteris esculenta. Dr. J. Haast notices

[Image of page 194]

also the occurrence of bones of the Dinornis in the moraines of the glaciers of South Island, and observes that the present Alpine flora furnished a large quantity of nutritious food quite capable of sustaining the life even of so large a creature; and as the fruits of these plants seem at present to serve no evident purpose in the economy of nature, he argued the former existence of an adequate amount of animal life, to prevent an excessive development of vegetation. This part was played by the Dinornis.

Those huge birds were then the only large animal beings that populated New Zealand; for of indigenous mammalia, except a little rat, there is nothing known. The first immigrants, 26 who throughout the whole length and breadth of the extensive forests found nothing for man to subsist on, except the native rat and some small birds, obtained from the giant-birds the necessary supplies of meat, enabling them to increase in course of time to a whole nation numbering hundreds of thousands. But for those colossal birds, it would be indeed utterly impossible to comprehend, how 200,000 or 300,000 human beings could have lived in New Zealand, a country which even in its vegetable world offered nothing for subsistence, except fern-roots.

That such was really the case is sufficiently proven in the traditions of the natives. Ngahue, one of the discoverers of New Zealand, -- so tradition says, -- describes the land as the haunt of colossal birds. There are yet some Maori poems extant, in which the father gives his son instructions how to behave in the contests with the Moas, how to hunt and kill them. 27 The feasts

[Image of page 195]

are described, which were wont to be instituted after a successful chase. Mr. Cormack as well as Mr. Mantell have found the bones on both the North and the South Islands in great number in the vicinity of camping-grounds and fire-places of the natives. Mounds were found full of such bones, in which after great feasts the remnants of the meals were promiscuously interred. The flesh and eggs were eaten; the feathers were employed as ornament for the hair; the skulls were used for holding tattooing powder; the bones were converted into fish-hooks, and the colossal eggs were buried with the dead as provision during their long last journey to the lower regions.

Consequently those huge birds were in former times the principal game of the natives, and were probably altogether exterminated in the course of a few centuries. They succumbed, --- the larger the species, the sooner, -- to the same fate, that is gradually sweeping the Kiwi, the Kakapo and the rat Kiore 28 in a similar manner, and before our eyes, from the face of the land. 29

[Image of page 196]

But what next? The Maoris had increased to a very numerous people, the Moas were exterminated; whence were the natives thenceforth to get their animal food? This question leads us to the cause and the origin of the terrible cannibalism, that held its sway of terror over New Zealand, when towards the close of the last century the first Europeans landed on its coast. What else is there that could induce a human being to devour his own kindred, but want and starvation? There is no other reasonable way of explanation for an act, which is so abhorrent to nature, that it occurs even with animals only in exceptional cases when want compels them to take to it as a last resource. It was not barbarity, not savage cruelty, not monstrous heathenism, that drove the uncivilized man of the South Sea so far, as to drink his fellow's blood, and eat his flesh; the cannibalism of the South Sea Islanders is to be accounted for in no other way, than the cannibalism of the civilized European, when, shipwrecked, and on the point of starvation, he lays hold of his ill-fated fellow. Cannibalism also, is but one of the manifold forms of the struggle of life.

It is thus alone that we are able to explain, why the history of the past century of New Zealand is but a terrible tale of war and carnage and horrid cannibalism, and why this unnatural state was put an end to within less than twenty years, when by the importation of swine and potatoes on the part of Europeans new means of subsistence had been placed within the natives' reach.

Cannibalism has ceased, as it began; but not so the struggle for existence. This has again assumed a new form. From the struggle with the animal world the native, as the stronger, had come out triumphant. But now the tawny South Sea Islander has to wrestle for his existence with "the pale faces", and there is no doubt, for whom the dooming die is cast in this contest. I am

[Image of page 197]

speaking here not only of the open, bloody war between the natives and the English, but of the struggle for existence, as it is carried out between man and man in all those innumerable circumstances, which are adduced as reasons, why in all parts of the world, in America, in Australia, upon Tasmania and at the Cape of Good Hope, as well as in New Zealand, the natives are continually growing fewer and gradually dying out.

In the vegetable and animal worlds, and among mankind this struggle is carried through according to unchangeable laws; -- among mankind not only between tribes of different races, but in the same manner between natives of the same race, between states and states, between families and families, between individuals and individuals.

What may be a consolation amid this ever lasting struggle, is that we know it to be a law of nature, on which the development of all creatures depends, that this struggle is not only a destructive one, but in the same measure a preserving and creating one. None but the weaker, the inferior, perish; the stronger and nobler element remains victorious. Thus every progress in the world depends on this struggle for existence, and as far as man is concerned in it, we may above all be consoled by the fact, that it is not physical force, which decides the issue, but moral power and mental superiority!

[Image of page 198]

Appendix.

Synoptical table, comparing the size of the foot, and the vertical height of several Moa-species with the African Ostrich, the Australian Emu, and the New Zealand Kiwi.

Synoptical table, comparing the size of the foot, and the vertical height of several Moa-species with the African Ostrich, the Australian Emu, and the New Zealand Kiwi.

1. The vertical height varies according to the position of the neck and foot. The figures given are the average for a natural, erect position.