BuRRELL. — Edrfh-rotation and Ocean Currents. 267 



water, on which is sprinkled some fine sawdust in order to show up the 

 currents more distinctly. 



The cord is wound around the shaft so as to give a clockwise motion 

 to the tray, this being the direction of the earth's rotation when viewed 

 from the South Pole. This is, of course, for a model of the Southern 

 Hemisphere, for the Northern the cord being wound the opposite way 

 so as to give an anti-clockwise rotation. The weight is then attached 

 to the cord, whereupon the tray slowly begins to move, and, while it is 

 slowly accelerating, all the phenomena of the main oceanic currents in 

 the Southern Hemisphere can be observed in miniature. 



Art. XXVIII. — Soyne Maori Fish-hooks from Ota{/o. 



By H. D. Skinner. 



[Read before the Otago Institute, 10th December, 1918 ; received by Editor, 27th 

 December, 1918 ; issued separately. Kith July, 1919.] 



Plate XXIII. 



Students of the material culture of the Maoris have long been familiar with 

 the great collections of stone and bone objects obtained from the beaches 

 of Otago. The beaches between Blueskin Bay and Hooper's Inlet, which 

 are not more than nine miles apart in a direct line, have contributed by far 

 the greater part of these collections, though Shag Point and Waikouaiti 

 to the north, and the beaches and islands of Foveaux Strait to the south, 

 have also yielded a share. At the beginning of the last century Otago 

 Peninsula and the coast immediately to the north-west of it were very 

 thickly populated. Indeed, one of the earliest European accounts of this 

 district speaks of " the town of Otago " as being the largest Maori village in 

 New Zealand. But early in the century the South Island was swept by an 

 epidemic which left only a few hundred native inhabitants south of Cook 

 Strait. The coast of Otago had long been frequented by sealers and whalers, 

 and when regular settlement on a large scale began the remnants of the 

 Maori tribes were rapidly Europeanized. For this reason very little detailed 

 information relating to material culture in the south has been preserved, 

 and conjecture is the sole guide in assigning uses to many of the articles 

 in public and private collections. There is no difficulty in diagnosing a 

 large section of the bone objects as the points of composite fish-hooks, 

 the wooden shanks and flax bindings of which have long since decayed 

 away. But, taken as a whole, tliese bone points, barbed and unbarbed, 

 differ so much from those used in the North Island that students can 

 only conjecture the types of hook to which they originally belonged. No 

 information can be given by the Maoris themselves. 



For these reasons the small group of hooks shown in the plate, several 

 of which have lost nothing more than the cord attaching them to the rod 

 or line or spread, is of unusual interest. They formed a part of the large 

 collection of ethnographic material recently presented to the Otago Uni- 

 versity Museum by Mr. A. Moritzson. Unfortunately, they liave no history. 

 When first received they were in a small box together with a number of 

 bone objects of types usually found on Otago beaches, and it was assumed 

 that all had been found in some cave, forming perhaps the complete outfit 

 of some neolithic fisherman. A closer examination showed that while 



