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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!
