172 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



that some of the drawings on rocks were made without special 

 purpose, for mere pastime, but they are of importance even as 

 scribbles. The character of the drawings and the mode of 

 their execution tell something of their makers. If they do 

 not tell us who those authors were, they at least suggest what 

 kind of people they were as regards art, customs, and some- 

 times religious belief. 



But there is a broader mode of estimating the quality of 

 known pictographs. Musicians are eloquent in lauding the 

 great composers of songs without words. The ideography, 

 which is the prominent feature of picture-writing, displays 

 both primordially and practically the higher and purer concept 

 of thought without sounds. 



Having examined the walls of the rock-shelter, I easily 

 recognised the figures given on plate vii. of the first volume of 

 the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute." The top 

 figure on the right hand is figured as extending upwards in a 

 series of dots. I was much interested to find that these dots 

 are not part of the original figure, which is a very old one in 

 red, painted with a fatty medium, but is, in reality, a charge 

 of lead shot which has been fired into the rock at close 

 quarters, as the shot are grouped together. Many of the shot 

 still remain more or less imbedded in the face of the rock, 

 which in this part has the hardened somewhat glassy sur- 

 face which occasionally forms on a limestone face. Now, the 

 figures drawn so accurately by Mr. Mantell were made in 

 1848, when he was travelling up the " Eiver Dismal," so that 

 for nearly fifty years those shot have been sticking in that 

 thin coating on the face of that rock. This is evidence that 

 there has been very little change in the surface of that part of 

 the shelter. 



Being so close to the road, the rock-shelter has been fre- 

 quently used by travellers passing up and down the valley, 

 and their presence was attested by an examination of the 

 floor of the shelter, in which I was most kindly assisted 

 by several local residents. Beneath the surface-sand which 

 covers the floor was a layer of fine rushes and grass, which 

 had been cut on the neighbouring river-bed for sleeping pur- 

 poses ; tent-pegs and fragments of canvas were also found, 

 together with a tin match-box and some buttons. Below 

 this layer, and nearer to the wall of the shelter, was a thin 

 layer of decayed vegetable matter, with some flax matting of 

 a very coarse character, and very much perished. Great 

 numbers of birds' feathers were met with between these two 

 layers of bedding — mainly feathers of weka, quail, a large sea- 

 bird (albatros?), paradise-duck, and shag. A large number 

 of bones of the now extinct New Zealand quail, including 

 twelve sterna, were recovered, and in the deep sand at the 



