152 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
shot a bird in Hawke Bay; he showed it to the old natives around him, 
who all said it was a native bird; some said positively it was a koreke (a 
New Zealand quail); others, a mohokura, or a mohopatahi (two species of 
small rails). However, it was sent to me, and it proved to be the intro- 
duced Californian quail. I have long ago known that in all such matters 
the natives are not now to be depended on ;* the oldest ones from their not 
having seen the animal or plant (in question) for many years, or perhaps 
not all; the younger ones from their never having known it! 
The dog is mentioned in their oldest traditions and myths. Dogs were 
sometimes sacrificed, in the earliest times, to obtain the favour of the gods 
who were invoked ; notably so, as is circumstantially related in the legend 
of the migration hither of the chief Turi and his party, who came from 
Hawaiki in the canoe Aotea, and landed on the west coast of this island. 
Turi is the (claimed) ancestor of the Whanganui tribes, and when on their 
voyage they had landed on a small island to refit and repair, a dog, whose 
name was Tangakakariki, was sacrificed with great formalities to appease 
the gods and to obtain them favourable winds. And this ancient Polynesian 
rite of sacrificing the dog may serve to explain two things respecting it 
which I have not yet referred to; the one took place at Tahiti, when Capt. 
Wallis, who discovered the island (two years before Cook visited it), was 
there; and it is thus related by him—but I should first mention that 
Captain Wallis was obliged to have two desperate engagements with the 
natives on his arrival, who courageously attacked his ship in great numbers; 
and it was only after killing several of them, and “ landing and destroying 
more than fifty canoes, many of which were sixty feet long,” that they gave 
over, and peace was made. Captain Wallis says :—“ At 2 p.m. (on the day 
of the last fight) about ten of the natives came out of the wood with green 
boughs in their hands, which they stuck up near the sea-side and retired. 
After this they brought several hogs with their legs tied, * * * and 
some dogs with their fore-legs tied over their heads, * * * also several 
bundles of cloth, and placing them on the beach called to us on board to 
take them away. At first we could not perfectly discover of what this 
peace-offering consisted. We guessed at the hogs and the cloth, but 
seeing the dogs, with their fore-legs appearing over the hinder part of the 
neck, rise up several times and run a little way in an erect posture, we took 
them for some strange unknown animal, and were very impatient to have a 
nearer view of them. The boat was therefore sent on shore; our people 
* Hence the many errors in Maori names of plants, etc., given in the ** New Zealand 
Institute Transactions” (passim) and in other modern publications, which seem to have 
- been collected by any and everybody and set down at random, and so doing positive and 
