Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/407

Rh were washed into lakes and swamps or buried in sand-dunes and river alluvium. In Glenmark Swamp, Canterbury, the remains of more than a thousand have been found, and in Southland fully four hundred skeletons were discovered within a radius of twenty-five feet.

Following the Pleistocene age the moas increased as the climate became more equable, and when the Maoris arrived they were plentiful in both islands. In vague Maori legends the moa's extinction is ascribed to fire and earthquake, but it is generally believed by authorities that the Maoris themselves exterminated the bird, probably three or four hundred years ago.

Of living birds New Zealand has a great variety. The land birds, which are far outnumbered by water and shore birds, are noted for their difference from the land birds of all other countries. Three of them—the kiwi, weka and kakapo—cannot fly, and the fern bird, now seldom seen, flies weakly.

The most singular of these birds is the kiwi (Apteryx), a long-billed bush bird that sleeps during the day. The kiwi, of which there are brown and gray species, has a peculiar shape. It has no tail, and in appearance is a cross between a football and a gourd. The bird nests in holes and hollow logs, and close observers say that apparently its eyesight is defective and that it is guided almost wholly by smell. In its egg-laying capacity the kiwi is, perhaps, the most unusual bird in the world. Although only as large as an ordinary domestic fowl, it lays an egg five inches long and three inches wide and averaging