CoLenso,.—On a better Knowledge of the Maori Race, 88 
this I have often seen. Why was this? was it that he really feared that 
little harmless animal ? or was it that that tiny creature was to him the 
form and representation of a great, fearful, mischievous, and mysterious 
power, the deadly foe of man, ever hated and dreaded by all New Zea- 
landers, and called an Atua, or demon? of which it was said—aye, and 
firmly believed—that it often gnawed the internal part of diseased folks, 
and so surely caused their death; or was it through their belief in those 
cherished legends of the olden time, that had been strictly handed down 
through many generations from father to son, containing the history of 
some dreadful monsters of the Saurian order, and which the prowess of 
their ancestors, aided by the charms and spells of their priests (mark this), 
had enabled them to vanquish and to overcome ? Animals of such a huge 
and monstrous size as would comparatively leave the Megatherium and 
Mammoth far behind in the place of kittens! 
And here I cannot help calling your particular attention to a very 
curious feature, which will prominently appear in the relations I shall have 
to give you—viz., that while the utmost exactitude is preserved in those 
strange stories—of time, and place, and persons, and of a certain amount 
of strong natural reality, yet not a single vestige of any osteological remains 
of any animal of the Saurian kind has ever yet been discovered! While, 
on the other hand, the fossil remains of many large and extinct Struthious 
birds of several genera and species, and commonly known in the lump by 
the name of Moa, are to be met with in great abundance; and yet, of these 
realities, there are neither credible history, nor curious legendary tale, nor 
myth nor fable, that I have ever been able to lay hold of. 
Captain Cook heard something of those large Saurians on his third voyage 
while at anchor in the Straits which bear his name; which, being but brief, 
I will give in his own words :—'* We had another piece of intelligence from 
this chief, that there are lizards there of an enormous size. He described 
them as being eight feet in length, and as big round as a man’s body. He 
said they sometimes seize and devour men; that they burrow in the ground; 
and that they are killed by making fires at the mouth of the holes. We 
could not be mistaken as to the animal, for, with his own hand, he drew a 
very good representation of a lizard on a piece of paper, in order to show 
what he meant.” And this statement was further confirmed by Mr. Ander- 
son, the surgeon to the ship, as appears from a note appended to that 
voyage, viz. :—‘‘In a separate memorandum book, Mr. Anderson mentions 
the monstrous animal of the lizard kind, described by the two young New 
Zealanders they had on board, after they had left the island."'* 
* 3rd Voyage, Vol. I., pp. 142, 153, 
