200 Transactions. 



period, long prior to the arrival of the race in Polynesia, the 

 ancestors of the Maori must have dwelt in a forest country. 

 Many things tend to the formation of this belief. 



As to the unseen presence in forests, the more primitive 

 peoples seem to possess this idea, as also a few* — a very few* — 

 white men who have lived much alone in the forest and are 

 imbued with a strong love of nature, and perhaps imaginative 

 minds. When such a man enters the portals of the woods and 

 wanders companionless in their darkling depths, he is possessed 

 of a curious feeling that he is not alone — that some presence, 

 unseen of mortal eye, fills the solitudes : curious because he is 

 tempted to wander on and explore the dusky recesses of the 

 forest, with a feeling that there is something hidden from his 

 ken — perhaps the w r oodland presence he feels may be seen ere 

 long. The mental state of our wanderer is one of receptiveness 

 of the effect of nature, and of expectancy. The haunting pre- 

 sence of the forest causes primitive man to evolve myths of 

 fairies, wood-elves, and divers creatures of the ogre type. To 

 cultured man, freed from the more primitive superstitious feel- 

 ings, it brings a feeling of pleasure, of wondering contentment. 

 But always the receptive mind, the love of nature, the imagina- 

 tive temperament, must be there. 



Then, again, there are strange sounds, of unknown origin, 

 breaking upon the ear. Weird sounds are these, more especially 

 as heard at night in forest-depths. But you must not erect a 

 tent and camp therein. Your bed shall be a take rakau, that 

 you may look upwards and see the great branches of the Children 

 of Tane far above you, with maybe a glimpse of some well- 

 known orb, Venus or Jupiter, or ruddy Antares, through leaf- 

 bound spaces. And, at such a time, when your camp-fire has 

 died down, and the solitude has filled your soul, you will greet 

 the gleaming Cross, or the Kakau, or Maui's Fish, as an old 

 and welcome friend that ties you to the world of life, where 

 men are. 



" When you hear in forest-depths sounds like rustlings — a 

 rustling and cracking— that is what we term a paranqeki. Those 

 sounds are caused by human spirits, spirits of the dead. The 

 singing of the heketoro (fairies) is quite a different thing." 



The forest and forest life has ever had an important effect 

 on man. A people settling in a forest country must destroy 

 that forest or it will conquer them. The forest is conservative, 

 repressive, making not for culture or advancement. None of 

 the higher types of civilisation of antiquity originated in forest 

 lands. Primitive man remains primitive in sylvan solitudes. 

 Some day a civilised trihe. from open lands, happens along, 

 and hews down that forest. Then the Children of Tane, human 



