516 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



constantly to be seen there seated by a large slab of sandstone, on which 

 they by turns rubbed backwards and forwards a misshapen block of 

 pounamu, while it was kept moist by water which dropped on it from 

 a wooden vessel. While one rubbed the other smoked. They made, 

 however, so little progress on it during my stay that it seemed probable 

 that it would be left for some one of the next generation to finish 

 the work. It is not, therefore, to be wondered that what has cost so 

 much labour should be regarded as the greatest treasure of the country." 

 Elsewhere he says, " When procured it is fashioned and polished by 

 rubbing it on flat blocks of sandstone. This is a work of so much labour 

 that to finish such a weapon as that of Te Heuheu often requires two 

 generations." Mr. John Kichard Jones, who as a boy knew Dr. Short- 

 land at Waikouaiti, tells me that he never saw the Maoris working 

 greenstone or making stone implements, but saw them using stone 

 implements of black trap in building canoes.] 



2. No chipping instruments were used — simply sandstone, fine sand, 

 and water, and a stick for drilling or groove-work. Stones were reduced 

 in size by rubbing them with laminae of sandstone used like a saw. I 

 have specimens of incomplete work done in this way : one where it was 

 intended to make a pair of axes, the faces of two axes being partially 

 complete, and the stone to be divided in twain about one-third com- 

 pleted. 



3. They are merely grotesque representations of the human form. 

 The name is derived from /tcf, which seems to mean a necklace, and Tiki, 

 the progenitor of the human race, the Epimetheus of the Greeks. Any 

 image of a man is known as Tiki. Their value greatly depends on their 

 antiquity. It is the practice to bury such and other valued articles with 

 the dead. After a time they are removed, and then are specially valued. 

 I remember a chief excusing himself from giving me an eardrop because 

 it was a inrati-tupapaku — i.e., a thing with a dead taint. 



4. The art is of ancient times, and endured till recently. 



5. The wood-carving skill was in full force when the colony was 

 formed. They came to New Zealand with the art, and practised it con- 

 tinually here. 



6. Our grindstone has been used for making pattis, and a cross-cut 

 saw and sand and water for sawing blocks into slabs, after the manner of 

 stone-cutters. 



7. A celebrated eardrop (Kaukaumatea) is reported to have been 

 brought from Hawaiki by Tama te Kapua, a chief of the Arawa Tribe, and 

 ■was in the possession of the chief Te Heuheu, with whom I have con- 

 versed, but was buried with him and others in a landslip at Taupo, and 

 has never since been recovered. 



8. This is answered in No. 2. 



9. I have recorded six varieties, — 



(a) Kaliuranrji. — Bright green, translucent, the most prized; used 

 for eardrops and other valued objects. 



(b) PijrhvaJiairoa [Pijnirarauroa : BuUer] .— -Wlaite and green. So 

 nnmed from a bird resembling it in plumage [the shining cuckoo — 

 Chrysococcyx bicidvs] . 



(c) Inanga. — Whitish. 



(d) Kanalam-a.—'Bdiy-gxeen. From resemblance to leaves of a shrub 

 of same name [Piijer excels2im] . 



(e) Kaval-atra tangiu-ai. — 'Resemh\es the colour of greenish glass. 

 [This name is probaMy a mistake for kokotanghvai. — F. R. C] 



(f) T?fa;)fl/ra.— Inferior stone; green and black intermixed. [A large 

 number of pieces in Mr. White's collection correspond to this. It seems 

 to have been used up for chisels and small tools. See Mr. Stack's an- 

 swers — kaJioica. — F. B. C] 



