Art. V.—Notes on Moa Caves, etc., in the Wakatipu District.

By Taylor White, Esq. (communicated by Captain Hutton).

There were also bones of other kinds of birds, some of which were very delicate, together with a considerable number of pieces of egg-shell. These were white, and might belong to a duck, but no feathers of this bird were found.

Excrement of a large bird was also found, which extended to a greater depth than the feathers. Some of this consisted of undigested fragments of what looked like the stalk of the fern.

Cave near Queenstown.

This cave is situated about a mile from Queenstown, in the range of hills on the south of the Gorge-road, and immediately above Jack's public house.

The entrance is difficult of access, the hill being almost perpendicular below it, It is fourteen feet high, by five feet wide. The floor, for the first ten feet, is level, and consists of fine mica sand to a depth of two feet, below which come blocks of schist, intermixed with finer material. The floor then has a steep descent for about sixty feet, and consists of very large schist blocks, intermixed with smaller. The average height is from six to eight feet, and the average width six feet. The roof had in places a thin white incrustation, but the other no sign of water drip.

At the junction of the sand and schist blocks, at the commencement of the descent, a quantity of double-shafted feathers of a brown colour, and with light-coloured down near the tube, were found, together with quill feathers of small birds—Paroquet, Lark, etc. These were most plentiful at a depth of a foot below the surface, but were also found at a depth of four inches. Some were immediately under large schist blocks. They appeared to be chiefly in a layer of hard-trodden excrement.

Perfect droppings were also found in the sand, and a few specimens of a similar outward appearance, contained undigested vegetable fragments, some of which seemed to be branches and stalks of fern broken into short pieces of three-quarters of an inch in length. No bones were found with them.

To the left of the mouth of the cave, and slightly higher up the hill, at a distance of about 200 feet, was a crevice of an angular form, about five feet wide and fifteen deep, which had been made by a forward slip of a portion of the hill.

In this Mr. Russell, of the American Transit of Venus Expedition, found bones belonging to a very large bird,^* also bones of several smaller varieties, and a portion of a large egg. The birds must have fallen or slipped in while examining its capabilities as a nesting place.

Dimensions of Moa Bones from Drift at Owen's Punt, Kawaru River.

Singular places in which Moa Bones were found.

Above the saddle between Mount Rosa and the spur leading to the bluff on the Kawaru River is a slight hollow of an oval form, about 60 feet wide, and surrounded on all sides but that facing the hill by a wall of rock eight feet high, which had the appearance of being in blocks, a number of which had fallen inwards, causing several crevices to be formed between them and the rock. At the bottom of the largest of these, where the rock was slightly overhanging and the front block sloped steeply downwards towards the rock, making a wedge-formed bottom at a depth of six feet and a width at top of five feet, with a length of nine feet, the length at bottom being only five feet, a number of bones belonging to at least four Moas were found.

Also, at a distance of 100 yards from this place, where the rock cropped out in the form of a step, there was a hollow in the rock four feet deep, eight feet long, and four feet wide, slightly wider at the bottom, from the rock overhanging. In the centre of the bottom of this was a large block of stone on edge, heavier than a man could move in such a small space. Around this block, and apparently under it, were bones of a large Moa, the majority of which were not obtained on account of the narrowness of the space.

Dried Specimen of a supposed Maori Rat.

This was found in a hollow under an overhanging rock. Buried in the sand was a spherical nest of grass and plants, in which was a perfectly mummified rat, without the hair. The hair was lying by the side, and was of a yellowish-red colour.

Either the skull was lying separate from the body, or there was the skull of another in the nest; I think the latter must have been the case. I put the skull in a match-box and the skin in my pocket, out of which it unfortunately dropped.

In the nest, or in the sand covering, were several feathers of the Kiwi.

At another place of a similar description, in what appeared to have been a hawk's nest, I got some hair, which I thought similar to that first found, and which I had lost.

The body was two-thirds the size of the common rat, a dried specimen of which I happened to have found and examined a short time previously.

Notes by F. W. Hutton:

The green egg-shell, from the cave at Mount Nicholas, proves, on microscopical examination, to have the true Dinornis structure. It is of a rather pale sea-green colour, smooth, but not polished, and covered with irregularly placed shallow rounded pits. The thickness of the shell is 0.04-inch, and the diameter of the egg appears to have been about four inches. The white egg-shell obtained from the same cave also belongs to the Moa. The feathers from this cave are not very well preserved. Most of them are pale yellow-brown, margined with darker, while a few were dark brown. The largest is six and a-half inches. The feathers from the cave near Queenstown are in an excellent state of preservation, much better than any previously obtained, and many have both shafts quite complete. The after shaft is much more slender than the true shaft; but often nearly as long; the barbs gradually get more distant from one another towards the apex, and they are generally opposite on each side of the shaft. I saw no sign in any of the feathers of the barbs near the base being in groups of four or five as described by Mr. Dallas in the “Ann. Natural