Sandy Bates, age 10, of Atlanta, Ga., for the question:

What was a moa?

The story of the moa birds is a tale of tragedy. A thousand years ago, when Leif Ericson visited the New World, the moas thrived on the islands of New Zealand. Then the big birds met disaster with which they could not cope. The last of them perished several hundred years ago. There are no moa birds in the world today, nor will there ever be moa birds again.

This is the tragedy when any creature becomes extinct. We know that its kind can never exist again. For every creature is the result of a long, long history. It developed its form and its habits by adapting to the changes around it. It is the product of ages of changes, accidents and events which the old earth can never repeat.

This is why we fight hard to preserve an animal threatened with extinction. We have saved the bison from disappearing forever from our land and we are trying hard to save the quaint whooping crane. We did not save the glossy passenger pigeon and we shall never see his likes again.

The big moa bird had at least 60 million years of history behind him. He had learned to cope with the climate and bring up his children in safety. He had a good life on the islands of New Zealand.

The moa looked like a monstrous ostrich. There were several kinds, the largest of which stood nine feet tall and weighed a quarter of a ton. Naturally, no bird this size and weight ever took to the air. The moa was a flightless bird.

The ancestors of the moa had been smaller, small enough to spread their wings and fly. But they gave up life in the air and grew larger and heavier through the ages about 1,000 years ago. New Zealand was settled by human beings. They were the Maoris, come all the way across the sea from the Polynesian Islands. The Maoris made themselves at home. They soon discovered that the big moa birds made fine food.

The big birds could not escape them. They were heavy and rather slow in their movements. At first they had no fear of man. Later, when they tried to escape, it was too late. It was no problem for men and even boys to run them down and club them to death.

The slaughter went on without mercy. The Maoris did not stop even when they noticed the big birds becoming scarce. They hunted and killed until the last of the moa birds was gone. The settlers from Polynesia were thereafter without moa meat. But far, far more sad was the fact that a creature was gone from the world in which it had lived for countless ages,

New Zealand cousin of the moa is the little kiwi bird. This chicken­ sized fellow is also flightless. Its feathers are soft and long like silken hair. A kiwi lives in the famous San Diego Zoo, though this is a very rare thing. The little fellow is exceedingly shy of human beings and does not usually thrive in captivity. Do you wonder?