"The part of the field on which the remains were found bears no traces of any physical disturbance--_e.g._ of earthquake, or flood, or hurricane--that would account for the sudden destruction of a flock or 'mob' of Moas. The Moa, when alive, carried in its crop--like our own hens--a quantity of stones to serve as a private coffee-mill for digestive grinding; stones which, being somewhat in proportion to the magnitude of the giant bird, form, when found in one place, a 'heap' of stones which are easily identified as a Moa heap, and nothing else. And in the present case the heap was here and there found in such relation to the bones of an individual bird as to show that the Moa must have died on that spot, and remained there quietly undisturbed. Further, the number of birds represented by the exhumed remains is so great that the living birds could not have stood together on the space of ground on which the remains were found lying. And there is not on any of the bones any trace of such violence as must have left its mark if the death of the birds had been caused by a Moa-hunting mankind. Finally, it does not appear that in this particular district there ever has been, at any traceable period of the physical history of the land, a forest vegetation, such as might suggest that the catastrophe was caused by fire. "The question how to account for the slaughter is raised likewise by two previous finds of Moa bones. The first of these, at Glenmark, in Canterbury, was the most memorable, because, being the first, it made the deepest impression. The second great find, far inland, up the Molineux River, otherwise the Clutha, was beneath the diluvium that is now worked by the gold-digger. The spot must have been the site of a lagoon, at one point of which there was a spring. Round about this point there were found the remains of, it was reckoned, five hundred individual Moas. The bones were quietly _laid_ there, with, in some cases, the 'heap' of digestive stones _in situ_ along with the skeletons. And Mr. Booth, whose elaborate investigation of this case is recorded in the annual volume of _The New Zealand Institute_, suggested the theory that the climate of New Zealand was changing to a degree of cold intolerable to Moa nature; and that the birds, fleeing from its rigour, sought comfort in the spring of water, sheltering their featherless breast in it, and so dozing out of this troubled life. And in this new find the wonder comes back unmitigated, as a mystery unsolved. For here is no bog deep enough, as in the first instance, nor lagoon spring, as in the second, to account for that multitude of giant birds dying in one spot.