24 Dendy, TJie ChatJiam Islands. 



very pleasing result that the great forget-me-not or 

 Myosotidiuni, elsewhere almost exterminated by the 

 stock, has begun to spread again vigorously in this locality. 



At Wharekauri, Mr. Chudleigh's estate in the northern 

 part of the island, I saw many bones lying beneath the 

 trees in a dense thicket near the shore, and was informed 

 that the Morioris sometimes tied their dead to trees in 

 erect postures, with a stick in hand pointing upwards to 

 represent a pigeon spear — the bodies being tied with the 

 stems of that curious climbing plant, the supple jack of 

 the settlers {Rhipogojtuin scajidots). 



Mr, Gilbert Mair, in a paper read before the Wellington 

 Philosophical Society in 1870,* also refers to this mode 

 of burial. He says : " In some instances the corpses were 

 placed upright between young trees, and then firmly 

 bound round with vines, and in course of time they 

 became embedded in the wood itself; sometimes they 

 were placed in hollow trees. Several skeletons have 

 lately been discovered by Europeans in trees which they 

 were cutting up for firewood, &c. In other cases the 

 corpses were placed on small rafts, constructed of the dry 

 flower stems of the flax ; water, food, fishing lines, &c., 

 were then placed by them, and they were set adrift and 

 carried out to sea by the land breeze. Not long ago an 

 American whaler discovered one of these rafts, with a 

 corpse seated in the stern, many miles from land. Not 

 knowing that it had been set adrift purposely, the captain 

 had a rope attached to it, and towed it into Whangaroa 

 Harbour, much to the annoyance of the natives." 



In considering the funeral customs of the Morioris, we 

 must certainly take into account the extraordinary tree 

 carvings so abundant in some parts of the island. A good 

 painting of some of these, by Miss Stoddart, may be seen 



^* Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, Vol. III., 1870, p. 311. 



