549 Proceedings. 
notices of their habits and customs, have been collected and become available for pur- 
poses of comparison. But it is obvious that the necessary materials for settling this 
question will be incomplete, if we, on our side, neglect the opportunity, now rapidly 
passing away, of putting upon record all that can be learnt upon the points at issue, 
from the Maoris themselves, whose tohungas, or chief priests, are in possession of much 
= bearing upon them 
In Dr. von Haast's recent address as p Predan of the Philosophical Institute of 
Canterbury (which will appear in the forthcoming volume of the Transactions),* that 
learned gentleman discusses the antiquity s certain raddle and charcoal marks upon 
some limestone rocks in the Weka Pass, on the line of road between Canterbury and 
Nelson, which (on the authority of one Matiaha Tira Morehu, a Maori residing at 
Moeraki) he attributes to a race of people called Ngapuhi (whom he characterizes as 
“ somewhat mythical”), to whom Matiaha also attributes “the extinction of the moa and 
the heaps of pipi shells found in the mountain ranges,” on the ground, as to the latter 
fact, that the supposed people were great travellers. But Dr. von Haast thinks he has 
found out what would certainly be a point of great importance if correct in regard to 
these so-called paintings, namely, that the ‘‘ mythical Ngapuhi” were in the habit of 
using “some oriental language" (previously identified by him as the “ Tamil," from 
comparison of what he terms fragments of letters with the inscription on Mr. Colenso’s 
belli) for the purpose of describing the wretchedly rude figures drawn on the rocks. 
Except a very fair sketch of a hat (something like a bishop’s hat) which, if it be intended 
` for a hat, speaks for itself, the figures certainly require explanation, but the learned 
doctor’s theory as to the origin of these seratchings would, if accepted, lead us to the 
remarkable conclusion that “a people mm Roiontiy civilized to teach their children read- 
ing and writing in some oriental language,” and who used it to indicate the meaning of 
the very rudest drawings upon a rock shelter, should have left no other trace of their 
civilization, and should have been content to carry cockles for food, from the sea-shore 
to the distant Southern Alps. I notice this remarkable portion of Dr. von Haast’s 
address in order to show how utterly indefensible it is to indulge in such speculations on 
the bare authority of an illiterate Maori, descended no doubt from some Ngatikahungunu 
migrant, whose knowledge of the South Island and its former inhabitants only dates 
from the well-known migration of a part of that tribe, some 200 year 
It will be seen from the foregoing remarka; that problems of very api interest are 
presented to us for solution, and that the culty of solving them is in no degree 
lessened by such ill-advised speculations as those to which I have referred. But let me 
enquire further what we have todo. We have, in the first place, to perfect the classifica- 
tion of our own fauna and flora—a work in which we are happily assisted by some of the 
greatest living writers on natural history. We have then to determine the relations of 
our fauna and flora to those of other countries—a work for which perfect materials will 
not be attainable for many years. We have, moreover, to carry back our enquiries on 
these points into past geological periods, in order to ascertain what relations the existing 
natural productions of these islands bear to those of which the remains have been pre- 
served to us in the great “ Stone Book” of Nature; and for all these purposes it is 
essential that we should be unceasing in observation and careful in its record. 
In order to illustrate the nature of the labours cast upon us, let me again refer to 
_the history of the great struthious birds which formerly roamed over the plains and open 
= à yen. these islands. The faet of their former existence has, as we know, been long 
* Mem Mnt - + Trans. N.Z. Inst., IV., pl. 2a. 
