Best. — Maori Forest Lore. 201 



and arboreal, alike disappear, and the place knows them never 

 again. 



There is much of silence in the heart of the forest. The 

 voices of the feathered Children of Tane are not often heard. 

 The harsh cry of the kaka occasionally grates upon the ear, 

 even in the dead of night ; but for bird-life you must seek the 

 stream-sides, the clearings and edges of the forest. Those birds 

 that frequent the deep solitudes are, as a rule, not a noisy com- 

 pany. In the small clearings of the forest, probably overgrown 

 with, light second growth of mako, puahou, wharangi, &c, you 

 will note, on sunny days, the hum of innumerable insects. At 

 times you hear strange sounds that you cannot explain ; at 

 others the crash of a fallen tree or branch, more especially in 

 wet weather, for continued rain will cause more destruction in 

 the forest than does the wind. 



Should a tree be heard to fall in the forest on a calm night, 

 such an occurrence is termed a takiari. It is an evil omen. If 

 several trees are so heard to fall on windless nights, then some 

 serious disaster will overtake the people ere long. 



There is yet another sound that you will hear by day and 

 night, which is one as of people talking. These sounds seem 

 exactly like the voices of persons talking at some distance. In 

 the days of my youth, when camped alone in the bush, I some- 

 times went in search of those persons. I no longer do so, but 

 they are old friends. In the early seventies an old soldier was 

 lost in the bush between Opotiki and Poverty Bay for a week. 

 He was at length found and brought down to a station at Wai- 

 kohu. He informed me that he often heard those forest voices 

 talking during his week's wanderings, and used to descend into 

 the gullies to find those people. But he was lightheaded from 

 hunger and exposure. Maybe all dwellers in forest solitudes 

 are a bit lightheaded. Quien sabe ! 



The forest solitudes will fill some who sojourn therein with a 

 great loneliness and misery, but to other minds may bring a 

 great contentment and even much calm happiness. 



The Sylva and Flora op Tuhoeland. 



We will now give a list, albeit an incomplete one, of those of 

 the Children of Tane-mahuta that are found in the Tuhoe dis- 

 trict — or, rather, such of them as we know the Native names of. 

 For there are many plants the Maori names of which have not 

 been obtained, as also some of which the botanical names are 

 not yet to hand. 



Aka. A generic name for climbing-plants and long, thin roots. 

 Aka-kopu-kereru. Clematis, sp. 

 Aka-tea. Metrosideros albiflora. 



