CoLENSo. — Beminisccnces of tlic. Ancient Maoris. 461 



displayed in the inner walls and ceilings of their best houses, 

 and also in their verandahs. ■= 4. Their famous boldly carved 

 and sculptured work. This, however, I omit, from want of 

 room, and because much of it yet remains with us, as may be 

 seen here in our local Museum. 



§ VIII. Of the Peculiar Modes of PKErARiNG some 

 Articles of Animal Food, as practised by the x\ncient 

 Maoris. 



Under this head I would briefly notice a few which were 

 both singular and strange, and confined to themselves, in which . 

 also they excelled ; these (like many other of their good and 

 useful preparations) having long become obsolete among the 

 Maoris. I am the more inclined to do this from my having 

 already given in a former paper j their striking and curious 

 modes of obtaining and preparing and laying up in store some 

 of their wild indigenous vegetable food for winter use, particu- 

 larly the fruits of the karalca {Gorynocarpus Icevicjata) and of 

 the hinau {Elceocarims dcntatus), the pollen of the raxq^o {Typha 

 angustifolia), and the roots of iheariihe = common fern [Pteris 

 escidenia). 



1. Of their little rat, once so plentiful and now extinct. 

 This animal was sometimes prepared in this way for their 

 chiefs' and first-class visitors' meal : It was carefully singed, 

 and so denuded of its fur, and then its bones w-ere broken with- 

 in the body and extracted by the anus, without breaking the 

 skin ; this done, it w^as cooked in their earth-ovens, and, being 

 very fat, made choice plump morsels, somewhat resembling 

 large sausages. The contents of its stomach (being a frugivo- 

 rous animal) were also eaten, much as in England those of a 

 woodcock or snipe. Another mode adopted by the old Maori 

 cooks was to stuff small rats into the belly of a large one. 

 For both of these gastronomic preparations they had pro^Der 

 names. 



In the early times, before the creation of the colony, when 

 lands were sold at the North, I have known a chief to lay 

 claim to a share of the price paid for the land from the fact of 

 his ancestors and himself being entitled to the fat of rats 

 caught thereon; and such claim was allowed. 



ibiquc cirrhi in modum revoluta, parte cirrhi formi flavissima." Porsfcer, 

 however, bad described it as being a species of Anthericiun ; but Brown 

 made a new genus of some Australian plants [Arthropodium) very- 

 near to the old Linnean genus Anthericiun, and so included this one. I 

 see Sir J. D. Hooker has given Brown's name after o.ur New Zealand 

 plant in his N.Z. Flora, but I tbink Forster's name should have re- 

 mained. 



* For more particulars, see my note about tbe same, Trans. N.Z. 

 Inst., vol. xiv., p. 50. 



t Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xiii., p. I',. 



