The first announcement of the former existence of large Struthious birds in
New Zealand was made by Mr. J. S. Polack in 1838. In his book _New
Zealand_, he states that he found large bird bones near East Cape in the
North Island. The first specimen, however, that came into the hands of a
scientific man was the bone sent to Professor Owen in 1839 by Mr. Rule, who
reported that the natives had told him that it was the bone of a large
Eagle which they called "_Movie_." Professor Owen, with his extraordinary
knowledge, at once saw that far from any connection with the _Raptores_,
Mr. Rule's bone was a portion of a femur of a gigantic Struthious bird. He
described it on November 12th, 1839, at a meeting of the Zoological
Society, and it was figured on Plate 3 of Volume III of the Transactions of
the Zoological Society.
The next notice of the Moas takes the form of a letter, received by
Professor Owen from the Rev. W. C. Cotton, dated Waimate, near the Bay of
Islands, New Zealand, July 11th, 1842; and in it the writer gives an
account of his meeting with the Rev. Mr. Wm. Williams, a fellow missionary
at East Cape. The latter had collected a lot of "Moa" bones and sent them
to a Dr. Buckland. Mr. Williams also reported a conversation with two
Englishmen, who declared they had been taken out by a native at night and
had seen a Moa alive, but had been too frightened to shoot it.
On January 24th, 1843, Professor Owen exhibited a number of bones from Mr.
Williams' collection, and described them, giving the bird the name of
"_Megalornis novaezealandiae_," afterwards changing the generic title into
_Dinornis_, as _Megalornis_ was preoccupied. Afterwards, when describing
these bones and those contained in the second box of Mr. Williams'
collection more fully, he somewhat inconsistently changed the specific name
to _struthioides_, which Captain Hutton, in his later classification,
retained. Following the laws of priority, however (_novaezealandiae_ has 10
months' priority over _struthioides_), we must reinstate the name
_novaezealandiae_.
A number of other finds occurred between 1842 and 1847, but by far the
largest and most important collections were made and sent home between 1847
and 1852 by the Hon. W. Mantell, who sent to Professor Owen many hundreds
of bones and eggshells, from which the Professor was enabled to determine
and describe a large number of species, and even as early as this to
separate some genera. {186}
The bulk of later finds were made by Sir Julius von Haast, Captain Hutton,
and Mr. Aug. Hamilton, and the two most famous deposits were Glenmark Swamp
and Te Aute; but it would take too much space to give here an account of
all the other extraordinary discoveries of Moa deposits made by such men as
Dr. Thomson, Mr. Earl, Mr. Thorne, Dr. H. O. Forbes, and many others.
Besides many fragments of eggshell, a number of eggs have been found, which
will be enumerated elsewhere.
Feathers have been found at Clutha River, near Roxburgh, and also in caves
near Queenstown. Those from Clutha are mostly dark, being black with white
tips; while the Queenstown ones resemble feathers of _Apteryx australis_ in
colours. Professor Owen has shown that _Megalapteryx huttoni_ was feathered
down to the toes, and in the plate I have represented it clothed with
feathers similar to the Clutha ones, which I believe belong to this
species. The Moas at one time must have been extraordinarily numerous, both
in numbers and species, and they varied in height from 2½ feet to 12 feet.
Professor Parker has shown that some of the species had crests of long
feathers on the head, and, as some adult skulls of the same forms show no
signs of this, he infers that the males alone had this appendage. There has
been much discussion as to the time when the Moas became extinct, and we
know for certain that the two species, _Dinornis maximus_ and
_Anomalopteryx antiquus_, belong to a much earlier geological epoch than
the bulk of the other species. It would be too lengthy for my purpose to go
into the arguments, but we can, by the study of the "_kitchen middens_" of
Maoris and their traditions, fairly adduce that the Maoris arrived in the
North Island some 600 years ago, that they hunted Moas, and that they
exterminated them about 100 to 150 years after their arrival. In the South,
or rather Central, Island, the Maoris appear to have arrived about 100
years later, and to have exterminated the Moas about 350 years ago. It is
only fair to say, however, that Monsieur de Quatrefages adduces evidence in
his paper which goes far to prove that Moas existed down to the end of the
18th or even beginning of the 19th century in those parts of the Middle
Island not, or scantily, inhabited by Maoris.
The _Dinornithidae_ form a separate group of the order _Ratitae_, in no way
closely related to the Australian Emu (_Dromaius_), as many ornithologists
have asserted, but nearer to the South American Nandu (_Rhea_) than any
other living _Ratitae_, though exhibiting many characters in common with
the _Apterygidae_. There have been a number of classifications set up of
this family. The first by Reichenbach, in 1850, with 7 species and 7
genera! {187} The next was by Von Haast, in 1873, who enumerated 10
species, divided into 4 genera. The third was Lydekker's, in 1891, who
acknowledged 23 species, divided into 5 genera. Then came Hutton's, in
1892, which left out _Megalapteryx_, with its then known 2 species, and
acknowledged 26 species, divided into 7 genera. Lastly we have Professor
Parker's, in 1895, in which again _Megalapteryx_ is left out, and 21
species are acknowledged, divided into 5 genera. There has been a great
amount of controversy as to the number of species of Moas which really
ought to be distinguished, and of late years there has been a tendency to
unite most of the species as synonyms, the authors declaring that bones
vary to such a degree that all the characters relied on for the
distinguishing of the various species were individual variations, and that,
besides, it was impossible that so many distinct forms could have occurred
in such a small area. The extreme of this lumping was reached when
Professor Forbes, in the Bulletin of the Liverpool Museums, III, pp. 27 and
28 (1900), divided the Moas into six genera, each with a single species. He
thus ignores the fact that by doing so he has united forms which were
founded on FULLY ADULT bones, and yet some of them were only about half or
two-thirds the size of the others. I personally think that too many species
have been made, and at least 7 of Captain Hutton's forms must be sunk. On
the other hand some have been described since 1895 and 1900, and I have
been obliged to name others rather against my will, so that in spite of
uniting so many species of others I find I am obliged to acknowledge more
species than anyone else. I have divided these into genera according to
Professor Parker's classification, only adding _Palaeocasuarius_ of Forbes,
with 3 species, and _Megalapteryx_, with 5, which brings my number up to 38
species, divided into 7 genera. My reasons for not uniting these into 7
species and 7 genera, as those of the "lumping school" do, are
twofold,--first, the bones of the _Ratitae_ are much more solid than those
of other birds, and are not given to so much individual variation; and,
secondly, in the face of the great number of species of Paradise Birds and
Cassowaries found on New Guinea, the contention that there could not be so
many species of Moa on so small an area is not easily maintained. Moreover,
we have strong support in the present fauna and flora for the presumption
that, when the Moas first came into existence and differentiated into
species, New Zealand was a much larger area, stretching at least from the
Macquarie Islands in the south to the Kermadecs in the north, and from Lord
Howe's Island on the west to the Chatham Islands on the east. So that, like
the giant tortoises on the Galápagos Islands, {188} they only got driven so
closely together after their specific differentiation, when the land
gradually subsided, owing to volcanic action. The differentiation of the
family is as follows:--