570 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Aet. LXVIII. — Note on a Bemarkable Maori Implement in 

 the Hunter ian Museum at Glasgoiu. 



By Sir Walteb L. Buller, K.C.M.G., F.E.S. 



[^Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 21st February, 



1894.'] 



Plate LI. 

 I WAS much interested on a recent visit to the Hunterian 

 Museum at Glasgow with the examination of a beautiful 

 specimen of the Maori implement known as the mira-tuatini, 

 which has long gone out of use. It was brought from New 

 Zealand by the great circumnavigator Cook, but is not the 

 one figured in the "Voyages." It was purchased, together 

 with some other Maori things, by the late Dr. Hunter at a 

 sale of a portion of Cook's collections which took place in 

 London very many years ago, and in this way passed into the 

 museum which the doctor afterwards founded at Glasgow, 

 and which bears his name. 



In Cook's "Second Voyage" (vol. ii., pi. xix., fig. 3) 

 there is an illustration of one of these implements, under the 

 name of a "saw," but it is of a somewhat different pattern, 

 the carving being less elaborate. In the original drawing, 

 which is now in the British Museum, it is called a carving- 

 knife. Mr. T. H. Smith, in his recent lecture at Auckland 

 " On Maori Implements and Weapons,"" states that in former 

 times the mira-tuatini was used for cutting up human flesh at 

 cannibal feasts. Its chief interest from an ethnographical 

 point of view is that it appears to supply another link of con- 

 nection with the South Sea Islanders. Every one is familiar 

 with the little handswords, edged on two sides with a setting 

 of small shark's teeth, from the Kingsmill or Gilbert Islands, 

 and those of a somewhat coarser make from the Hervey 

 Group. The mira-tuatini is contrived on the same principle. 

 The Glasgow specimen is in the form of a small fish-slice, 

 measuring 8-75in. in length by 2-25in. in the widest part of 

 the blade, and its somewhat rounded cutting-edge is armed 

 with seven irregular sharks'-teeth, set continuously in a close 

 row, the base of each tooth being neatly let into the woodwork 

 and firmly secured by having the more or less open margin of 

 the weapon bound round with flax fibre. At each end of the 

 blade, if I may so term it, there is a circular paua-'&h.eW eye, 

 and the intermediate space is filled with perforated carving of 

 an elaborate pattern, and of apparently ancient type, the lines 



* See above, Arb. XLIX. 



