Cotenso.—On the Maori Races of New Zealand. 353 
carving, they used a thin piece of obsidian. One of their most ingenious 
instruments was a kind of wimble, or drill, composed of a small cylindrical 
piece of wood, produced to a point at one end, to which was fixed a small 
angular quartz stone; two strings were also fastened at the opposite end, 
these being repeatedly pulled by both hands in a contrary direction (the 
stone to be bored, &c., being firmly held by the feet), a hole was in time 
perforated. They used the wedge (matakahi) in splitting trees; and another 
simple machine, composed of a short lever with short straps, on the plan of a 
tourniquet, was also used by them in expressing oil from the seeds of the 
titongi (Alectryon excelsum), &c., &c. For water vessels they commonly used 
the hard and fully ripened rind of the cultivated gourd, hue, which sometimes 
attained to a large size, hardened by baking, sun and fire. The larger 
calabashes were selected for potting fat birds, and similar delicacies, in their 
own fat. Oil was often kept in the smaller calabashes ; also in dilated joints 
of kelp, and in the stout double air-bladder of the curious sea-porcupine fish 
(Tetraodon sp.) 
16. They cultivated the ornamental as well as the practical. This has 
been already shown (in part) in the manufacture of their clothing mats, in 
their canoe decoration, in their carving, &c. Their greenstone ear and neck 
ornaments belong to this class; which, from their shape, polish, and tenuity, 
as well as from the well-known hardness of the stone, must have taken an 
enormous time to finish. The mako, or teeth of the long-snouted porpoise 
(a species of mammal rarely indeed to be met with,—driven on shore, at 
least), was also greatly prized for ear ornaments. The black and white tail 
feathers of the bird huia (Neomorpha gouldii), and the snowy plumes of the 
kotuku (Ardea flavirostris), were greatly prized, to adorn the heads of 
their chiefs; the former were snared in their proper forests, by skilled 
natives imitating their call; the latter was (in the Northern Island) rarely 
seen, and yet they sometimes managed to capture it alive, and to keep it 
so in a cage for a considerable time for the sake of its feathers, which 
they regularly plucked. The white down of the albatros and of the 
gannet was also worn by the chiefs both in their hair and ears, as 
ornaments; while the women often wore suspended to their necks the 
mottled feathers of the paradise duck and of the little blue teal of the 
mountain rivers. They also ornamented themselves by wearing in their ears 
the beak and feathered skin of the Awia, deprived of its tail-feathers; and 
also of the ¢wi or parson bird, and of the elegant little glossy cuckoo, or 
pipiwharauroa (Chrysococcyx lucidus), while the long tail-feathers of the 
larger cuckoo, or koheperoa (Eudynamis taitensis), they also wore in their 
hair. Flowers were also sometimes used for this purpose ; especially the 
elegant climbing puawananga (Clematis sp.), and neat waewaekoukou (Lyco- 
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