Flightless Birds

Under this heading there is little evidence to chronicle as to the ingenuity of the Maori fowler in devising snares and traps, for the simplest of his methods and paraphernalia were connected with the taking of these ground-birds. It is true that among them we find that most interesting creature, the moa; but that giant of the forest and piain has long passed away, and the Maori has preserved little knowledge of how it was taken. Nor is there ought of much interest to say concerning the taking of short-flight birds; but when we come to deal with the free-flying forest birds then the Maori will give evidence of his aptitude for circumventing the offspring of Tanemataahi, and, incidentally, belie the extraordinary Statement of Wilkes that he, the aforesaid Maori, could not catch birds. Nor was Wilkes the only foreign voyager to under-rate the intelligence of the Maori, for in L'Hornes' Journal of the voyage of the St. Jean Baptiste (1769) we find: "There are land birds in quantities, probably because the natives do not possess the cleverness to kill them."