460 Transactions. — MlsceUaneotis. 



Here, in conclusion, I may briefly mention an instance 

 of their correct discrimination on the contrary side, clearly 

 showing how well and closely the ancient New-Zealander 

 agreed in his opinion of a plant with the highly-civilised 

 scientific visitor already named above, the botanist Forster. 

 Forster named the Coprosma genus from the foetid odour of 

 the first species he discovered in the South Island, which 

 signification he also continued in its specific name, G. 

 fcetidissima : this shrub also bears a similar Maori name, 

 Jiwpiro, highly expressive of its very disagreeable smell. 



§ VII. Of their House-decorations. 

 These were mainly of three kinds: 1. Their peculiar 

 manner of making a smooth surface to the large flat and 

 broad hardwood pilasters of their principal houses by dubbing 

 them down. These were closely worked into little shallow 

 semi-symmetrical ridges and hollows, somewhat imitating the 

 trunk of the larger fern-trees ; and the work was called, after 

 them, 'ponga, p)onija2)onga, and mamaku, and all done, of 

 course, with their stone adzes. It had rather a pleasing effect. 

 2. Their strange and bold regular designs drawn on the larger 

 roof-rafters and beams of their chiefs' houses, which had 

 been previously smoothed and prepared, reminding the be- 

 holder at first sight of stencilwork. These traceries were of 

 various patterns, and coloured red and white. All the patterns 

 of their ornamental-border carvings and coloured tracings 

 bore different proper names ; and so of branches or parts of 

 the figures, when compound, as mango-pare (the hammer- 

 headed shark), hikuaiia (herring- tail),''' koivJiai, from the 

 flower of the koichai-tree, &c. ; and all from real or fancied 

 resemblances — correlations, as it were, of the Maori mind. 

 One, in particular, I may mention and explain : This pattern 

 was called rengarenga, from being an imitation of, or ideal 

 association with, the curved anthers of the flowers of that 

 plant, the New Zealand lily {Artliropodium cirrhatum). Here 

 we have another curious and pleasing instance of coincidence 

 of ideas in natural close observation and naming between 

 two widely opposite peoples, the ancient New-Zealander and 

 the highly-civilised European— the German botanist Forster 

 who accompanied Cook on his second voyage to New Zealand, 

 and who gave the appropriate specific name of cirrhatum 

 to this plant from its peculiar closely-curved and revolute 

 anthers. f 3. Their striking and neat variegated reedwork, 



* Lit. tail of the aua, a small sea-fish, Agonostoma forsteri. 



t I give ill a note that portion of Forster's full and able description 

 of this line plant which applies to its anthers: " Antheras oblongre 

 erectfe, bisulcis, candidse. I3arbata corpuscula duo filiformia, purpurea, 

 pubescentia ab anthera ad basin filamenti longitudinaliter dependentia, 



