154 Transactions. — Zoology. 



to collate this information and place it on record in some per- 

 manent form. A volume of " Important Judgments " of the 

 Court was published some years ago, but nothing more has 

 been achieved, if we except the publications, from time to time, 

 of individual Judges of the Court. It is not too late now, for 

 it is well known that the most capable of these Judges have 

 preserved all their note-books. In the hands of a skilful com- 

 piler, possessing the necessary qualifications, a most interest- 

 ing and valuable volume would be the result. For example, 

 what could be more spirited than the sketch of Maori history 

 contained in Mr. Fenton's judgment in the celebrated Pukeha- 

 moamoa case at Hawke's Bay — one of the last delivered by 

 him — or what more poetic than the evidence in that case of 

 Noa Te Huke, who rested his whole title on the dying words 

 of his female ancestor, " Take me not away from the land, but 

 bury me within hearing of the Eangitahi waterfall " ? 



There is another consideration to be borne in mind, and it 

 is this : that, in the case of evidence given on oath, the natural 

 tendency to romance is necessarily somewhat if not entirely 

 curbed, and that consequently by this means a truer narrative 

 ought as a rule to be obtained than by any other mode of 

 inquiry. What, for example, could be more realistic and 

 apparently truthful than the following passage taken from the 

 ■evidence of Matiaha Peko, in the Eangatira case (1882), about 

 the killing of Totohu ? — " I was born at Te Ngei, and am the 

 son of Takiau, the same man who killed Totohu in company 

 with Te Kapiti, at Te Karangi, on the Pourewa. They killed 

 him for stealing the eels there. Then they cut him up and ate 

 him — ate the whole of him, except the head, and that we put 

 on a pole. We dried it, Maori fashion (mokomokai) , and took 

 it to Turakina. There was a kumara ground there, and we set 

 up the head on it to scare the pukekos. Afterwards it was 

 thrown into an eel-pond or lagoon at Waiwhero. I helped to 

 eat him. I saw the head. It was a huge head, with crisp 

 hair, like a negro's (poriki), and the face completely covered 

 with tatooing. He was said to belong to Ngatihauiti." 



It would not require much play of the imagination to sup- 

 pose that the remarkably thick cranium which I have exhibited 

 this evening belonged to just such a head as that so graphi- 

 cally described by Matiaha Peko — that of the unhappy eel- 

 poacher, Totohu. 



