| Haast.— Address. 47 
would occasionally see on posts or smooth rocks, rude representations of 
men, ships, canoes, and animals drawn by Maori children, but they were 
always of an ephemeral character—Maori artists confining themselves to the 
drawing of scrolls, and then always in permanent colours. In looking at 
the ensemble of these rock-paintings, it is clear that there is some method in 
the arrangement which at once strikes the eye as remarkable. Some of 
the principal objects evidently belong to the animal kingdom, and represent 
animals which either do not occur in New Zealand, or are only of a 
mythical and fabulous character. Some of them can easily be recognised ; 
the meaning of others can only be conjectured. The group in the centre 
is of a different character, which is difficult to explain, unless we assume 
that it represents implements and portions of dress of a semi-civilised 
people. Only two representations of man can be recognised, but they are 
full of movement and evidently in the act of running away, whilst the figure 
of the bird is very suggestive. Below these principal groups we find several 
smaller figures or signs, the meaning of which for a long time considerably 
puzzled me. I was inclined to believe that they might be a kind of 
hieroglyphic writing, but unfortunately there were too few of them we 
thought worth copying, the greater portion having much faded or broken 
away. Some ofthose which were too faint occurred at nine, thirty, and 
forty-six feet from the left-hand side. They were sometimes close to the 
floor of the rock-shelter, but did not go below it, which is of some import- 
ance to prove that the kitchen middens which had here accumulated were 
either forming, or had already been formed, when the paintings were 
executed. The thought struck me at last that these smaller figures 
resembled the letters of some oriental languages, and that I had seen some- 
what similar characters published in our ‘“ Transactions.” The Tamil 
inseription round the antique bronze bell, now in the possession of the 
Rev. W. Colenso, in Napier, at once suggested itself to me ; and in eom- 
paring the peculiar figures with the writing on that bell, as given in Mr. 
J.T. Thomson's interesting paper,* I was at once struck by the marked re- 
semblance between both. It would be a most curious coincidence and difficult 
to imagine, that the ancient inhabitants of this island should adopt similar 
figures, and place them, as it were, below the representations of animals, 
some of foreign countries, or scenes of life without any meaning; or should 
we assume that, as the bell with the Tamil inscription was found in New 
Zealand, so other objeets were secured from the same or another similar 
wreck, amongst which pictures of animals and adventures of human life, 
with writing below them, were obtained, and which afterwards were copied 
* “Ethnographical Considerations on the Whence of the Maori," by J. T. Thomson, 
F.R.G.S., “ Trans. N.Z. Inst.,” IV., 23 
