November io, 1892] 



NATURE 



leadly enemies. Seeing that these long spears were always 

 made from heartwood of their tallest trees, it was a mystery to 

 me how they managed to manufacture them, the hardwood ones 

 being from l6 feet to 20 feet and the others from 20 feet to 

 35 feet long ; and it was not until my first visit to the Urewera 

 Tribe, at Ruatahuna, in the interior beyond Waikare Moana, 

 in 1841, that I discovered how it was effected. This patient 

 performance has,ever seemed to me a notable example of one of 

 their many laborious and persevering works. For it must never 

 be forgotten, in considering their ancient laborious and heavy 

 works, especially in hard substances, as wood, bone, and stone, 

 that they accom;>li5hed all without the use or knowledge of iron 

 or any other metal. 



First, a straight, tall, and sound ta'Ma-\xQ& was selected in the 

 forest. This was felled with their stone axes. Its head and 

 branches having been lopped off, it was dragged out into the 

 open ground, and split down the middle into two halves. If it 

 split easily and straight, then it would probably serve for two 

 spears, if each half turned out well in the working. The next 

 thing was to prepare a long raised bed of hard tramped and 

 beaten clay, 35ft. -40ft. long — longer than the intended spear — 

 the surface to be made quite regular and smooth (like a good 

 asphalte kerb town walk of the present day). On to this clay 

 bed the half of the tawa-Xxzt. was dragged, and carefully adzed 

 down by degrees, and at various times, to the required size and 

 thickness of the spear. It was not constantly worked, but it 

 was continually being turned and fixed by pegs in the ground, 

 to keep it lest it should warp and so become crooked. It took 

 a considerable time — about two years — to finish a spear. The 

 last operation was that of scraping with a broken shell or frag- 

 ment of obsidian, and rubbing smooth with pumice-stone. 

 When quite finished and ready for use a suitable tall and straight 

 tree was found in, or on the edge of, the forest ; its trunk was 

 trimmed of branchlets, &c. ; the long spear was loosely fixed 

 vertically to it, so as to run easily through small round 

 horizontal loops girt to the tree, and placed at some distance from 

 each other ; the tip of the spear concealed, yet protruding near 

 the topmost branches of the tree ; and, as the pigeon is a very 

 thirsty bird (especially, I should think, after feeding on the large 

 fruits of the tawa and of the miro — Podocarpus ferruginea — 

 trees, which are hot and piquant), the Maoris made small corru- 

 gated vessels of the green bark of the totara tree that would 

 hold water, and fixed such on the top of the tree to which the 

 long spear had been lashed, and by-and-by, when the bird was 

 settled above after drinking (for it is a very quiet bird, sitting 

 long after feeding), the spear was gently pulled down by its 

 owner below on the ground, and sent up with a jerk into the 

 body of the pigeon. I have seen the fixed spear thus used in the 

 forests, and have eaten the bird so captured. 



I may here mention that I have also seen those totara-bark 

 dishes, with water in them, fixed high up on the big branches of 

 trees in the woods in the Urewera country, having flax nooses 

 so set over the water as to catch and hold fast the pigeon in its 

 drinking. I have seen pigeons so caught, the Maoris climbing 

 the trees naked with the agility of monkeys to secure their 

 prizes. 



From the large amount of labour and the time consumed in 

 the making of a long spear, and its great beneficial use when 

 made, arose a good proverb among them relative to industry in 

 tillage, &c., and to being prepared — '''^ Kahore ketaraingataherc 

 i te ara " — You cannot hew a bird-spear by the way. Meaning : 

 Without timely preparation you may die from want of food, 

 though the pigeons are plentiful in the forests near you. 



0/ the Fine SmcUing-sense and Taste of the Ancient Maoris 

 for Perfumes. — I have already more than once, and in former 

 papers read here before the Institute, touched on the superior 

 powers of sight of the ancient Maoris ; ^ and it has often occurred 

 to my mind that they also possessed a very keenly developed 

 sense of smell, which was largely and quickly shown whenever 

 anything sweetly odoriferous, however fine and subtle, had been 

 used — as eau de Cologni.-, essence of lavender, &c. Indeed, this 

 sense was the more clearly exhibited in the use of their own 

 native perfumes, all highly odorous and collected with labour. 

 Yet this sensitive organization always appeared to be the more 

 strange when thehorribly stinking smells of two of their common 

 articles of food — often, in the olden times, in daily use — are con- 

 sidered : rotten corn (maize, dry and hard, in the cob) long 

 steeped in water to soften it ; and dried shark. The former, 



' Trans. N. Z. Inst. vol. xiv. p. 67, &c. 



NO. 1202, VOL. 47] 



however, has long been abandoned ; yet at one period every 

 village at the North had its steeping-pit. 



In a paper I read here at our June meeting I mentioned some 

 of the very small Hepaticje {Lofhocolea and Chiloscyphus 

 species) as being used for perfume by the Maoris, who called 

 them piripiri. Their scent was pleasant, powerful, and lasting. 

 Hooker, in describing those plants, has mentioned it from dried 

 and old specimens. Of one species, Lophocolea pallida, he says, 

 "odour sweet;" of another, L. novmzealandice, "often 

 fragrant ; " of another, L. allodonta, " odour strong, aromatic ;" 

 of another, Chiloscyphus fissistipus, " a handsome strongly- 

 scented species : " and he has further preserved it to one of them 

 in its specific name, C. piperttus, "odour of black pepper." 



There were also two or three ferns — viz., Hymenophyllum 

 sanguinolentum, a very strong-smelling species, hence too its 

 specific name ; dried specimens not only retain their powerful 

 odour, but impart it to the diying papers : Polypodium pustu- 

 latum, having an agreeable delicate scent : and Doodia fragrans, 

 a neat little species ; this last was so far esteemed as sometimes 

 to give name to the locality where it grew, as Puke mokimoki,^ 

 the little isolated hill which once stood where the Recreation- 

 ground now is in Napier ; that hill having been levelled to fill 

 in the deep middle swamp in Monroe Street. 



One of the Pittosporum trees, tawhiri {P. tenuifoliuni), also 

 yielded a fragrant gum ; but the choicest and the rarest was 

 obtained from the peculiar plant taramea {Aciphylla colensoi), 

 which inhabits the alpine zone, and which I have only met with 

 near the summits of the Ruahine Mountaip-range, where it is 

 very common and very troublesome to the traveller that way. 

 The gum of this plant was only collected through much 

 labour, toil, and difficulty, accompanied, too, with certain cere- 

 monial {taboo) observances. An old tohunga (skilled man, and 

 priest) once informed me that the taramea gum could only begot 

 by very young women — virgins ; and by them only after certain 

 prayers, charms, &c., duly said by the tohunga. 



There is a sweet little nursery song of endearment, expressive 

 of much love, containing the names of all four of their perfumes, 

 which I have not unfrequently heard affectionately and sooth- 

 ingly sung by a Maori mother to her child while nursing and 

 fondling it : — 



Taku hel piripiri, 

 Taku hei mokimolc!, 

 Taku hei tawhiri, 

 Taku k^ti-taramea. 



My little neck-satchel of sweet-scented moss. 



My little neck-satchel of fragrant fern, 



My little neck-satchel of odoriferous gum, _ 



My sweet-SDQelling neck-locket of sharp-pointed taramca.- 



Here I may observe that to the last one of the four the word 

 kati is prefixed : this word — meaning, to sting, to bite, to punc- 

 ture, to wound sharply and painfully — is added to indicate the 

 excessive sharpness of the numerous leaves and leaflets of the 

 / tramed^j^\z.xA (hence judiciously generically named by its early dis- 

 coverer,' Forster, ,'/c«^//>'//a = needle- pointed leaf), and the con- 

 sequent pains, with loss of blood, attending the collecting of its 

 prized gum, thus enhancing its value. 



This natural and agreeable little stanza, one of the olden time, 

 has proved so generally taking to the Maori people that it has 

 passed into a proverbial saying, and is often used, hummed, to ex- 

 press delight and satisfaction— pleasurable feelings. And some- 

 times, when it has been so quietly and privately sung in a low 

 voice, I have known a whole company of grey-headed Maoris, 

 men and women, to join in the singing : to me, such was always 

 indicative of an affectionate and simple heart. How true it is, 

 " One touch of nature makes the whole world kin " ! ' 



In the summer season the sleeping-houses of their chiefs were 

 often strewed with the large sweet-scented flowering grass karetu 

 (Ilierochloe redolens). Its odour when fresh, confined in a small 

 house, was always to me too powerful.* 



■ Mokimoki Hill, from mokiiiioki, the name of that fern. 

 ^ See Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xii., p. 148. 



3 It is pleasing to notice that the observant artist Parkinson (who was with 

 Sir Joseph Banks as his botanical draughtsman, and Cook on his _first Vojr- 

 age to New Zealand) makes special mention of those little satchels in his 

 Journal, saying of theselMaoris who came off tothe^hip intheii canoes, "Thp 

 principals among them had their hair tied up on the crown of their heads 

 with some feathers, and a little bundle of perfume hung about their necks " 

 (Journal, p. 93). Captain Cook, also, has similar remarks respecting the 

 young women. 



4 Sir J. D. Hooker thus writes of this fine, sweet-smelling grass in his 

 " Flora Novae Zelandiae ": "A large and handsome grass, conspicuous for its 

 delicious odour, like that of the common vernal grass (Anthoxaitthitm) oi 

 England, that gives the sweet scent to new-made hay "'{I.e., vol. ii., p. 300). 

 A closely-allied northern species (^. boreal is), which was also supposed to 



