Dreaming of Moas

Strange stories of strange birds and even stranger fossils were coming from the end of the world during the 19th century.

The first Europeans spotted New Zealand in 1769 and Captain Cook explored the Northern Island four years later. Cook was very interested in natural history and collected tales about the fauna and flora from the locals. 

On the Northern Island nothing unusual was reported, however on the Southern Island legends involving a monstrous bird existed. These legends explain an unusual hunting method for a large bird. Hunters would use incandescent rocks, which swallowed by the bird would then burn it from inside. The preferred habitat of these birds was said to be the swamps and forests and according to some legends until 1800 they were very rare animals, but still living on the island.

In the year 1823 a hunter named Meurat claimed to have found a bone with flesh attached to it. He assumed by the apparent good preservation that the remains were very recent. 

Joel Polack, a trader who lived along the eastern coast of the Northern Island, records that during a forced stop of his ship in the Tolaga Bay in 1838 he had been shown “several large fossil ossifications” found near Mount Hikurangi by the Maori in the winter of 1834. He was certain that these were the bones of a species of emu or ostrich, adding in his report that “the Natives add that in times long past they received the traditions that very large birds had existed, but the scarcity of animal food, as well as the easy method of entrapping them, has caused their extermination“. Polack further noted that he had received reports from Maori that a “species of Struthio” still existed in remote parts of the Southern Island.

The German naturalist and geologist Ernst Dieffenbach also refers to a fossil from the area near Mt. Hikurangi and reports that it belongs to “a bird, now extinct, called Moa* (or Movie**) by the natives”. He continues “On questioning the natives, as I usually did, relative to the natural history of their country, I heard a curious tradition connected with the totara-tree in the neighbourhood. Near this tree they said their forefathers killed the last moa. From the few remains of the moa that have been found it has been declared by Mr. Richard Owen to be a struthious bird of large size."

Read the whole fascinating piece by David Bressan over at his Scientific American blog. You'll be surprised where this story ends up!

Naturalist and moa searcher's library up for auction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moa_footprints.jpg

A collection of more than 600 rare books dubbed the "last great private library" in New Zealand goes under the hammer in Auckland next week. The books, collected by Auckland naturalist and scholar Arthur Pycroft, who died in 1971, include a complete set of Cook's Voyages, published in the 1770s, a first edition of the first novel published in New Zealand, Taranaki: A Tale of the War by Henry Stoney (1861), and a two-volume set of Captain Scott's journals from his last expedition, published in 1914.

Former Auckland auctioneer Brian Grosinski, who has written the catalogue for the auction, recalls that the most recent significant book sale, the Henderson Collection, from Wellington, was in 1983, nearly 30 years ago. "The Pycroft Collection is really the most important sale in New Zealand since then and there probably won't be another one like this one. It's the last of the old-fashioned gentleman-amateur collections."

Pycroft, who was born in 1875, was educated at the Church of England Grammar School in Parnell and Auckland Grammar School, before joining NZ Railways at the age of 15. He eventually became a stationmaster in the Bay of Islands and rose to a senior management position in Auckland. It was a time when a career with the railways was highly regarded.

But natural history and ornithology (along with taxidermy) were his true enthusiasms, interests he developed during explorations of Hen Island, Little Barrier, the Kermadecs and Melanesia.

He also joined the Auckland Institute at Auckland Museum in 1896, where he served on the council for more than 40 years.

Although Pycroft took long periods of leave for his explorations, he really came into his own at the age of 50, when he received a substantial inheritance from family in England. He retired - his family home was a 4ha block in St Heliers, in a street now called Pycroft Place - and went at his collecting and research apace. He was a member of the "Moa Searching Committee", which involved searching for skeletons at various sites in New Zealand, and a newly discovered species of petrel was named in his honour: Pterodroma pycrofti.

From today's perspective, Pycroft's taxidermy skills had a downside. In 2006, Auckland artist Hamish Foote had an exhibition called The Feathered Drawer, which included a painting called Pycroft's Supper, a narrative of an actual incident from about 100 years before when a bird hunter brought the carcass of a huia to Pycroft. He skinned the bird, then asked his housekeeper to cook it for his supper. Within two years, huia had vanished from the land forever.

The Pycroft auction also features albums of photographs of early Auckland and Northland, an original photograph of the Discovery signed by Ernest Shackleton, a collection of rare books recording Pacific voyages and anthropology, shipping and maritime history, and early New Zealand exploration - including the extremely rare Rambles in New Zealand by John Carne Bidwill (1841).

Another category includes chronicles of the NZ Company, emigration and the Wakefield Settlements, before moving on to colonisation, missionaries and the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori history, rights and land purchase, and early Maori language publications, including an 1838 New Testament and an 1852 translated version of Robinson Crusoe. Lot 228, Te Tohunga, a 1907 German translation of ancient Maori legends and traditions by Wilhelm Dittmer, features a chamois leather cover adorned with a "fine coloured full moko face" on the cover.

The final day of the sale offers some fine examples of New Zealand natural history and botany, including seven books by Buller, with whom Pycroft corresponded, mountaineering and sport, early tourism, children's books and Auckland newspapers from 1844-74.

The catalogue reveals some intriguing secrets. Lot 384, in the mountaineering section, is The Conquest of Mt Cook written in 1915 by the first woman to climb the mountain, Australian Freda du Faur. A newspaper obituary inside the book reveals that on her return to Melbourne, poor Freda succumbed to "introspection and delusions".

Auction

What: The Pycroft Collection of Rare Books

Where and when: Art + Object, 3 Abbey St, Newton, November 2-3 at 6.30pm