H FOOD. [PART i. 



reka-reka, or slaves, retain their share, and sit by 

 themselves. The food must be consumed in the 

 open air ; the dwelling-house is " tapu." Formerly 

 pipis, or cockles, formed a great part of their food, 

 and were obtained in large quantities on the ebb of 

 the tide. Fish are used, either fresh or dried in 

 the sun. They are caught with the seine, or with 

 a navicular (canoe-shaped) piece of wood, lined on one 

 side with a thin plate of the pawa-shell (Haliotis), 

 in imitation of a fish, and with a hook formed from 

 a piece of human bone, or the whole hook is formed 

 out of human bone ; this is used without bait, and 

 is towed at the stern of a canoe. The use of human 

 bones for this purpose was meant to convey an in- 

 sult and a defiance to a hostile tribe, as only the 

 bones of enemies killed in battle are thus used. As 

 a fly, a feather of the apterix is highly esteemed. 



The half-fossilized bones of the moa, a bird be- 

 longing probably to the struthious order, but now 

 extinct, were selected for their hardness, in ab- 

 sence of the larger and stronger bones of quadru- 

 peds. Flatfish and rays are transfixed with wooden 

 spears in the shallow bays ; fish of the genera Scom- 

 ber, Trigla, Serranus, Sparus, Balistes, Labrus, and 

 Conger, are caught either with the seine or with 

 hooks ; a Myxene with the hand ; and four kinds 

 of fresh-water eels by baiting a very skilfully-con- 

 structed funnel-shaped basket of wicker-work (pu- 

 koro-tuna). A species of shark which at Mid- 

 summer that is, at Christinas visits in countless 



