92 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



food, kumara, or taro, or greens, or potatoes. Persons of 

 importance would often have a basket to themselves, and 

 persons under tapu would take their food apart from others. 

 When a person was under a special amount of tapu, such as a 

 tohunga taua, or chief priest, after he has been engaged in 

 cutting the hair of the sacred mdtdmua, or first-born of a high 

 family, or a priest who is attending a lying-in woman, then it 

 required several persons to feed that priest, who could not 

 touch cooked food with his hands. One person would pre- 

 pare the food in a special oven and hand it to another, who 

 bore it to another person, who took it to the person who was 

 appointed to feed the priest (as if the latter were a helpless 

 child). Only this last person would approach the priest ; the 

 others kept afar off. At the present time the dishes are used 

 here in which to place the food, and one often sees the dogs 

 joining in the repast. The water in which greens have been 

 boiled is poured into the dish among the food, and each per- 

 son will lift the dish in his hands and drink of this delightful 

 beverage. 



Spits on which food, such as birds, &c, was stuck in order 

 to be roasted are of two kinds. One, termed huki, is simply 

 a pointed stick. The other, called a korapa, has two points, 

 made by splitting the end of a stick and opening the divided 

 halves out. 



Food-stores were formerly an important item in the Maori 

 domestic economy, and the pataka, or raised storehouses for 

 keeping food in, are too well known to need any description 

 here. Stages or platforms, termed whata, were also much used 

 for the same purpose. The elaborately carved storehouses 

 of old were generally used for containing the more prized 

 articles of food, such as huahua. Pataka pu kiore is an 

 expression applied to storehouses built so that the rat cannot 

 enter them, by placing a broad slab on the top of the posts 

 supporting the floor of the store. 



The ivhata-a-rangi is a stage or platform erected in a tree, 

 and is used for storing foods on. The tvliata poto is a stage 

 built on high posts, and used for stacking food-supplies on. 

 It has no house on it, or permanent roof, merely a thatched 

 roof to protect the stores from the rain. The ivhata pu kiore 

 is a stage built on two, four, or six posts, and on which a 

 wooden building of neat and close construction is built. 

 These stores were reached by means of rude ladders (ara- 

 ivhata), usually a log with a series of notches cut therein for 

 steps. 



The Maori does not use any implements in eating saving 

 the time-honoured " Tokorima a Maui" — i.e., his five fingers. 

 In the case of a person under tapu, and hence unable to touch 

 •cooked food with his hands, he would either get some person 



