England) should be initiated as early as possible. The perfectly wonderful results achieved in England at a comparatively small cost is a sufficient guarantee of the usefulness of these classes. The Science Directory issued by the Council gives every particular of the work of their organization.
Observations on Captain Hutton's paper "On the Maori Cooking-places at the Mouth of the Shag River" (Trans. N.Z. Inst., VIII., p. 103). By Julius von Haast, Ph.D., F.R.S.
[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 15th December, 1876.]
It was not my intention to enter at present any further into the controversy concerning the age and time of extinction of the different Dinornis species, but on a perusal of Captain Hutton's paper "On the Kitchen-middens at Shag River Point," I feel obliged to say a few words in reply, as my silence might otherwise be taken for my agreeing with all his statements and deductions, of which several, as I shall show, are utterly at variance with the observations I made in that locality. Although my own excavations were on a more limited scale than those made by and for Captain Hutton, all the principal facts were nevertheless ascertained by me, and no further excavations, even had they all been made under his eyes, could alter them in the least.
And as Captain Hutton bases his deductions principally upon the excavations made by other persons, it is very probable that the position and sequence of the beds were imperfectly understood by them, and that therefore these deductions, based upon partly erroneous interpretations, can in many instances also not be accepted.
In order to show that I do not speak at random, I wish only to give one instance, which is conclusive. In my paper I stated that—
"In their vicinity (shell-beds), and below high-water mark, a small flat stretches towards the river channel, which is in many localities literally paved with Moa bones. The excavation which we undertook on this piece of ground proved that the lowest bed of human origin, consisting of boulders, once forming the cooking-ovens, had been arranged at least two feet below the surface of the flat. Here and there a chipped stone implement, embedded amongst the bones and of exactly the same character, proved that the same people who feasted on and near the summit of the sand-hills, camped here on the flat, which must then have been high and dry, and, as before observed, situated about theee feet above high-water mark, as the fires with which the Moa-hunters heated their boulders at the bottom of these ovens could not otherwise have burnt."
