Field. — On the SJiifting of Sand-dunes. 567 



hollow, evidently an ancient watercourse, running along it 

 towards the Okehu ; and near the head of this hollow the site 

 of an ancient pa has been exposed. 



I visited the spot several months ago, and found that there 

 were all the ordinary traces of Maori occupancy, in the shape 

 of old cooking-places and cooking-stones, with bits of bones 

 and shells, flakes of obsidian, and damaged stone implements 

 lying about (any perfect ones had no doubt been picked up) ; 

 but what was particularly noticeable was that the sites of the 

 old huts were defined not only by the stumps of the uprights 

 of the huts, or holes in which those uprights had stood, but 

 by the receptacles for the hot embers used to warm the huts. 

 These receptacles differ utterly from any w4iich I ever saw 

 elsewhere. As a rule, these are merely shallow round hollows 

 in the centre of the floor, but sometimes are surrounded by a 

 ring of long oval pebbles sunk in the floor to form a margin. 

 In this case, however, the arrangement was far more elabo- 

 rate. On the beach at the mouth of the Okehu, and thence 

 to the Kai Iwi, there is a seam of thin white stone, resembling 

 the Yorkshire flags used for footpaths in London and else- 

 where. Pieces of this stone had been carried up from the 

 beach, and each had had one edge dressed straight, and its 

 arrises rounded, after which they had been sunk in the floor, 

 so as to form oblongs of about 18in. by 12in., standing up lin. 

 or 2in., and nicely level on top. The neatness of the arrange- 

 ment, and the trouble taken to effect it, were very noticeable ; 

 and there were at least a dozen similarly formed. There had 

 evidently been far more, as the stones which had formed 

 them were lying in groups, having been kicked out by the 

 stock, or pulled up by mischievous Europeans. I have no 

 doubt that Popoia was the name of this ancient pa ; and 

 that hence it came to be applied to the sandhill by wliich the 

 pa was overwhelmed. As invariably happens in cases where 

 an ancient surface is thus exposed, the soil had entirely dis- 

 appeared. It might have been supposed that the pa stood on 

 a flat of bare clay but for the fact that there were the fern- 

 roots and roots and stems of shrubs lying about to attest the 

 former existence of soil. It seems strange that drift-sand 

 should have the property of apparently absorbing and destroy- 

 ing vegetable mould in this manner, and making fertile land 

 barren. 



It was on the top of the Popoia sandhill, as it drifted away, 

 that Mr. Handley found a curious object, now in Mr. Drew's 

 museum at Wanganui. It is of dull obsidian, about the size 

 of the implement known as a bed-key, and formed, in the same 

 way, into three arms radiating from a common centre. Each 

 arm is about as thick as a man's finger, and they are beauti- 

 fully evenly chipped, but not ground or polished. The use or 



