THE MAORI’S PLACE IN HISTORY. DAG 
even in high Jatitudes. The entire absence of domestic 
ruminants in Polynesia before the advent of Europeans 
cannot be attributed to the region being unfitted for them or 
the difficulty of transport. ‘The goat, one of the first animals 
subjugated by man, could have been conveyed from place to 
place more easily than the widely distributed pig, as it 
requires little water and there is scarcely an islet or rock 
within the tropics that would not furnish it something to 
eat, while the way in which this and our other domestic 
animals have multiplied since their introduction proves that 
the islands are well adapted for them. Sir Joseph Hooker 
in his Himalayan Journals, referring to the inhabitants of the 
Khassia Hills, remarked :— The Khasias eat fowls and all 
meat, especially pork, potatoes and vegetables, dried and 
half putrid fish in abundance, but they have an aversion to 
milk, which is very remarkable, as a great proportion of the:r 
country is admirably adapted for pasturage. In this respect, 
however, they assimilate to the Chinese and many Indo- 
Chinese nations who are indifferent to milk, as are the Kummi 
people. The Bengalese, Hindus, and Tibetans, on the other 
hand, consume immense quantities of milk. They have no 
sheep, and few goats and cattle, the latter of which are kept 
for slaughter; they have, however, plenty of pigs and fowls.” 
Before the first incursion of the pastoral peoples from the 
grassy plains of Central Asia there can be little doubt that 
the south-eastern portion of the continent and the adjacent 
islands were occupied by exclusively agricultural nations, 
one of which, Japan, remains almost unaltered. Dogs, pigs, 
and fowls, being the only foreign domestic animals Europeans 
found in Polynesia, naturally suggest a connection with these 
ancient agricultural people. 
In the art of tattooing,and the scale on which they practised 
it, the inhabitants of Eastern Polynesia and New Zealand 
surpassed all the modern people. Yet both in the tropical 
and temperate islands clothing was general, reminding us of 
the Japanese, who also adorn their skins and clothes. In 
common with the less civilized inhabitants of the Pacific, 
the Japs before coming in contact with Europeans did not 
consider going naked even in public places an impropriety. 
Throughout Polynesia the principal article of clothing was 
the tapa or felted bark cloth, manufactured from the bark 
of the paper mulberry (Brussonetia papyrifera), a native of 
Japan, which was extensively cultivated for the purpose. In 
Japan the bark is still used for making paper and a woven 
