524 Proceedings. 



been lost, but in every case the circumstances of the loss had been preserved 

 and handed down.) If this bird was genuine, and all that it was alleged 

 to be, then there should be no difficulty in ascertaining how or in what man- 

 ner it had been lost, who was the original owner, and who the man was 

 that died without disclosing the hiding-place of this rara avis. He would 

 not say that he thought all Maori traditions reliable, especially where 

 they related to affairs of the other world or matters connected with far 

 Hawaiki ; but when the traditions related to the acts or omissions of men 

 he thought they might be accepted not only as reliable but without 

 question— provided always that they did not appear in the form of a 

 ■waiata : in such case he would be suspicious ; for who could translate it 

 satisfactorily ? Probably not three men in New Zealand ; for to do so 

 one must know the exact circumstances under which it was made. 



Mr. Coleman Phillips said that if the bird had really been brought 

 over in the Tainui canoe, as alleged, similar carvings should be found 

 in some of the South Sea islands, whence the Tainui came ; but he 

 was not aware of any. He would look the matter up upon his return 

 home ; but he was certainly unaware of any carvings in the islands 

 similar to this one. The bird did not look to him at all like a native 

 carving ; there was an appearance about it of some hand used to sculpture 

 in our own way. Not that the South Sea islands afforded no traces of 

 stone-workers. There were the stone images of Easter Island, the mono- 

 liths and trinoliths of Tonga, the cyclopean remains of Strong's Island, 

 and certain remains of aqueducts in New Caledonia. 



Sir James Hector. — And the chalk figures from New Ireland. 



Mr. Phillips said. Yes ; but he had often thought that the New Ire- 

 land Islanders were taught that kind of carving by the Spaniards, it being 

 now some four centuries since the Spaniards first landed there. How- 

 ever, he would look up the question of modes of carving. With regard 

 to Mr. Albert Walker and Major Wilson, he knew them both. It was 

 now .some eleven years since he met Mr. Walker, whom he then con- 

 sidered an honourable man. Major Wilson was a thoroughly honourable 

 man. Mr. Walker might have treated this finding of the Korotangi as a 

 joke, but not as a fraud. If the members of this Society thought dif- 

 ferently, he would write to Mr. Walker himself, and ask him to explain 

 the matter if he would. The history attached to the bird might be a 

 fraud ; and Mr. Walker might have been personally deceived. He re- 

 membered reading a short paper some years ago in that room upon a 

 curious method of arrow-propulsion that he had observed amongst the 

 Maoris.'" He was told by Mr. Colenso and others that the Maoris had 

 been taught this custom by some whalers. 



Mr. Tregear. — No. 



Major Gudgeon. — No. 



Mr. Phillips.— Indeed ! Then he was glad to find that his paper 

 •was correct. He would write to Mr. Walker about this bird. 



Mr. Maskell said that in one way this was rather an important ques- 

 tion, as affecting the honour of the societies affiliated to the New Zealand 

 Institute. In 1880 Sir J. von Haast, accepting the story of the finding 

 of this bird in the North Island, and of its antiquity, laid a model_ of it 

 before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury ; and in vol. xiv. of 

 the " Transactions" might be found a short paper by him, in which he 

 attributed the carving to JajDanese artists. f Since that time the stone 

 bird had been accepted as a genuine relic, and models of it appeared in all 

 the museums of the colony. Now, if the whole thing was a fraud, all of 

 our societies had been, practically, taken in by a modern edition of 

 " Bil Stumps his mark ; " and it did seem that, as a matter of honour. 



* " Transactions," vol. x., p. 97. 

 t " Transactions," vol. xiv., p. 104. 



