Smith. — On Maori Belies. 429 



the first colonists, when ploughing and clearing it, found large 

 quantities of buried charred trunks of several species of 

 native forest-trees of considerable dimensions. They com- 

 prise totara (Podocarpus totara), black-pine (P. spicata), miro 

 (P. ferruginea), white-pine (P. dacrydioides), manuka (Lepto- 

 spermum scoparium) , broadleaf (Griselinca littoralis), and seve- 

 ral other species. An upright trunk of white-pine still exists 

 on Mr. G. Jameson's property, three miles inland from Lake 

 Ellesmere. Large roots and trunks of these indigenous forest- 

 trees are also at the present time dug out of the old exten- 

 sive swamp formerly extending from near the Ashburton 

 River to south of the Hinds, a distance of fourteen miles. An 

 area of the same old fallen forest exists several miles seawards 

 of Winchester, eighteen miles south of Hinds, where men are 

 annually employed by contract raising the fallen trunks and 

 disposing of them to the settlers for firewood. In these three 

 areas many stone and wooden implements, together with 

 valuable kuvietes, or food-bowls, and other ruder relics of 

 barbaric times, have been ploughed or dug out by the settlers 

 within the last thirty years. The implements, of many forms 

 and qualities, and other native utensils belonging to extinct 

 tribes found on or near the sites of the burned or buried 

 forests," or in ancient forests still flourishing, were probably 

 lost or mislaid by their owners while hunting. 



Several discoveries of various numbers of stone adzes, 

 axes, and fish-knives found hidden together in the soil have 

 been made in Ashburton County since the beginning of 

 English settlement forty-five years ago. Mr. M. McCormick, 

 an old bachelor settler in the early days, found " about half 

 a barrow-load" of stone implements hidden in a cache on his 

 land. Stone being then scarce on the richer land of the 

 plains, he built his rude fireplace with them, excepting one 

 of the form marked E on Plate XVI., which he still retains. 

 An examination of fragments of these burned stone axes, 

 shows some of them to have been only rudely flaked into 

 shape, while others were semi-polished, and all manufactured 

 from several varieties of basalt. 



Among the more valuable old Maori relics unearthed from 

 the sites of the vanished forests of the plains is the boat-like 

 kumete, or food-bowl (2), now in the possession of Mr. James. 

 Bishop, of Wheatstone, near Ashburton. The polished fern- 

 beater (6) of a fine quality of black basalt, and the greenstone 

 chisel (10) or knife, with a long cutting edge, together with 



* In referring to these areas as " buried forest " it only implies that 

 the numerous trunks, after being charred in a growing position, were 

 subsequently blown down and submerged in the swampy land where they 

 grew. The timber of many of them is still in a remarkably sound con- 

 dition. 



