2 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Amongst the many curious questions to which the region 

 has given birth, none have more completely baffled inquiry 

 than those suggested by its human inhabitants. From whence, 

 how, and when were its countless scattered islands peopled 

 is still as great a mystery as when Europeans first discovered 

 them. 



In many of these islands the inhabitants, on our becoming 

 acquainted with them, possessed various arts and had many 

 customs in common with peoples in other distant portions 

 of the world, besides having in cultivation a number of 

 foreign plants, and in domestication a few foreign animals. 



In addition to these traces of a civilization certainly not 

 endemic, and probably not indigenous, scattered through- 

 out the numerous island groups were monuments evidently 

 of great antiquity, many of them being far beyond the con- 

 structive power of the modern inhabitants. 



By following up these traces to their source it is evident 

 we must obtain, in part at least, a reply to one or more 

 of these questions — from whence, how, and when came the 

 inhabitants of the islands wherein they occur ? 



This course of inquiry was not open to those who first 

 speculated on the " mystery of Polynesia"; with the assist- 

 ance of physical science, the conclusions arrived at by 

 modern historians and archaeologists, and the observations 

 made by travellers and others in various parts of the globe, 

 it may now be possible. 



Of the three great periods — the Age of Stone, the Age of 

 Bronze, and the Age of Iron — into which the history of art has 

 been divided, the Old World, at the commencement of the 

 sixteenth century, may be regarded as representing the Iron 

 Age, the New World the Bronze Age, and the Pacific region, in- 

 cluding Australasia and Polynesia, the Age of Stone. Though 

 the inhabitants of the continent and of the countless islands 

 scattered over the vast ocean may be thus grouped together, 

 in other respects they difier widely. Thus, while the Austra- 

 lian aborigines were mere nomad hunters, the inhabitants of 

 Polynesia and New Zealand were skilful agriculturists. To 

 the more advanced section of the population we must chiefly 

 look for the lost history we are seeking, and for the causes 

 that placed all so far behind in the march of civilization. 

 Amongst the various groups inhabited by the agricultural na- 

 tions, the New Zealand Archipelago, owing to its geographical 

 position, its size, its varied geological formation, and its 

 climate, is the most important in the present inquiry. Had 

 the islands been first populated by a people acquainted with 

 the methods of obtaining and manufacturing metals, these 

 arts, as well as those connected with agriculture, would have 

 been preserved, notwithstanding the few cultivated plants the 



