170 Transactions. — Miscellaneo7cs. 



tricts where there are caves or rock-shelters. Having spent 

 most of tlie years that I have been in New Zealand in the 

 North Island, I had never had an opportunity of seeing any of 

 the pictographs of the kind described by Professor Von Haast 

 until quite recently. Since the close of our last session I paid 

 a visit to Duntroon, a small township on the Waitaki Eiver, 

 for the purpose of photographing the pictographs casually 

 mentioned by the late Hon. W. B. D. Mantell in his address 

 to the Wellington Philosophical Society on the moa, on the 

 19th September, 1868, published in the first volume of the 

 Transactions. In that volume is given, on plate vii., a repre- 

 sentation of a few of the pictographs, and amongst them one 

 which Mr. Mantell took to be a moa feeding. Unfortunately, 

 the address is only given in abstract, so that we cannot tell 

 exactly what the lecturer said on the subject of these Ngati- 

 mamoe or Eapuwai works of art. The Takiroa cave or shelter 

 is close to the road and the railway passing up the Waitaki 

 Valley, and is the result of the usual aerial agencies acting on 

 a limestone bluff in the river-bed. The photographs which I 

 exhibit show that the cliffs are of a considerable height, and 

 have a talus slope down to the level of the road of the frag- 

 ments detached by the constant action of the wind and rain. 

 The position of the cave is sunny, and, although a strong wind 

 was blowing down the valley, I found the cave itself well pro- 

 tected from its violence. 



On my first visit I carefully examined the walls of the rock- 

 shelter, and found that the figures were easily divided into three 

 classes — First, those painted on the surface of the rock with 

 a thick medium of animal fat or oil in black or red {koko- 

 wai), those in black (charcoal?) being apparently the earlier. 

 Secondly, by figures drawn in black without any medium at 

 all, probably with a charred stick or piece of charcoal : these 

 can easily be distinguished from the earlier ones, and careful 

 rubbing will remove them, but has no effect on the others. 

 Thirdly, there are a few initials and marks cut in with knives 

 by the modern vandals or travelling swaggers — to say nothing 

 of one ingenious man who has painted his name in a con- 

 spicuous position in orthodox oil-paint. 



I took a series of photographs of all the black and red 

 pictographs, and I have since had them enlarged considerably, 

 and I intend taking these enlargements to the spot and colour- 

 ing them from the actual paintings. In this way I hope to 

 eliminate as far as possible the "personal equation" which 

 disturbs so largely sketches made by even practised artists. 



Professor Von Haast, in his paper, described elaborately the 

 different figures from the Weka Pass, and laboured earnestly 

 to invest them with mystic meanings, seemg therein altars and 

 Tamil characters. Now, the figures that I saw at the Takiroa 



