398 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



ing of the person named, after which any other person taking 

 a liberty with it would be regarded as offering insult to the 

 person whose name had been so used. The object was to 

 associate the person named with the owner or claimant in 

 defending or maintaining possession of the thing " tapa "-ed. 

 To resort to this mode of proceeding was regarded as a gross 

 insult to the rival claimant, who was thus baulked in any 

 attempt to possess himself of the property in dispute, and it 

 often led to reprisals in some shape. The form of tapa tapa 

 was, " Waiho te mea ko Mea " — " Let the thing be So-and-so." 

 It was throwing down the gauntlet — not your own glove, but 

 that of some other person. Another use of a name was in 

 time of war, threatened or actual : a chief of high rank nearly 

 connected with both belligerents, if desirous of preventing or 

 ending strife, would sometimes name a war-path his backbone, 

 " Iivi tuaroa," and if, after his having done so, either side used 

 the path with hostile purpose, it would be regarded as a mortal 

 offence, to be wiped out only in blood. 



Other peculiar uses of names of persons, and Maori customs 

 connected with them, might be noticed, but, with your per- 

 mission, I will pass on to Maori names of places, as the part 

 of my subject to which I propose to devote the larger portion 

 of the time allotted to me. 



In entering upon this branch of my subject I would take 

 the opportunity of expressing my regret that we colonists, 

 having adopted Maoriland as our country, professing our wish 

 and intention to occupy it together and upon equal terms 

 with those who were here before us — its original possessors — 

 should have allowed so many of the native names of places 

 to fall into disuse — should consent to let them be lost or 

 forgotten. We have built cities, and we were right to give 

 them names. Our houses, our streets, our roads — everything 

 which we have brought into being — we were warranted in 

 naming. But the mountains, the bays, the rivers, lakes, forests, 

 the grand natural features of these Islands, had names before 

 we came here, and why should they not be preserved ? Is it 

 well or creditable to our sentiment that they should pass into 

 oblivion ? 



It has been said that Maori words are so difficult of 

 pronunciation. I quite fail to understand how it can have 

 come to pass that Maori words or names should be thought 

 difficult to pronounce. It appears to me that the sounds of 

 the Maori language are so few and so simple that, if two or 

 three plain rules are observed, no name or word need present 

 any serious difficulty. If only it be borne in mind that the 

 language is dissyllabic ; — that the vowels have the Continental 

 sound ; that every syllable ends with a vowel — in fact, con- 

 sists of a single consonant followed by a vowel, or of a so- 



