598 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



found one (a dog- skull) under the sand, alongside a kowhai up- 

 right piece of wood, which had been the support, or one of the 

 supports, of the roofing of an ancient Maori dwelling, which 

 could only have been inhabited eighty or a hundred years ago, 

 as no natives have been at the place for over that time. It is 

 quite possible this dwelling may have been empty for two 

 hundred years. I forward this head, and one found by my 

 brother, and a lower jaw found by him at another old settle- 

 ment. . . . Sometimes very large heads have been found, 

 and at others very small ones. . . . If I had known some 

 years ago I could have got you hundreds, but now they are 

 getting scarce." 



These two skulls are surprisingly small. The two, and a piece 

 of a substance like ruddle or red-ochre, were packed in a com- 

 pass which might be supposed to contain one fair-sized skull. 

 They must be very different from the one Mr. A. Hamilton 

 found at Shag Point or Eiver, and which he said was about the 

 size of that of a collie-dog. Now, I would ask the question, 

 Have we not here something worthy of note — a dog buried at 

 the foot of a post — presumably "the chief corner-stone" of 

 the building — for I suppose other parts of the skeleton were 

 with the skull ? Had tlie Maori a custom of making his new 

 dwelling tapu, sacred to himself alone, or to be guarded hy the 

 spirit of the dog ; or allied to the custom of BaJmi ? At one 

 time in Europe it was customary to bury a slave, or some par- 

 ticular person, at the ceremony of laying the chief corner- 

 stone, and perhaps we still have a survival of this idea when 

 we in modern times place coins, newspapers, &c., under the 

 foundation-stone. I would like the opinion of a good Maori 

 scholar on this point. Of course, the old-time missionaries 

 would set their faces against such customs as heathenish, and 

 would ignore them, as in Europe idols and so-called sacred 

 books of the old faith were destroyed or burnt. 



In the Maori language are three words which mean both 

 dog and quadruped — kuri, which is the most general term for 

 dog; kirehe and kararelie, which seem allied to the verbs karehe 

 and7*ere, "to run"; the latter also means "tolly" and "to flow," 

 as water. The following quotation from Genesis, i., 24, will serve 

 as a comparison with those given in the Nine tongue : Te 

 kararelie, me te mca ngokingoki, me te kirehe o te tvhenua. In 

 Earotonga the pig, as the best-known quadruped, has acquired 

 the meaning of animal or cattle, as e poic oki ta kotou an pu- 

 aka i te reira, " and will also destroy your cattle." At the 

 present time to define a pig the Earotongan will say imaka 

 maori — i.e., the indigenous animal. This gives us the mean- 

 ing of our word maori as applied to the native race, meaning 

 indigenous, common, or ordinary, and would seem to be short 

 for tangata 7naori, " a man indigenous " (to the country). In 



