368 . Essays. 
ends; in procuring fire by friction, and in making it to blaze, and in finding 
out the best tinder; in making their ingenious snares for hawks, ducks, rats, 
&c., and their various cleverly made fish-hooks, some artificially baited with 
mother-of-pearl shell for the kahkawai, and others with a chip of tawhai 
(Fagus) wood for the barracouta ; in making their quartz-pointed wimble, 
and their “Spanish tourniquet,” and their delicate tattooing instruments. 
They were passionately fond of music, but it was peculiarly their own: and 
of poetry, or of its chief ingredients, sentiment and rhythm, although they 
had not rhyme. They greatly excelled in order and regularity, which they 
carried into almost everything they did, as shown in their parallel 
carving, regular in its wildness, and in tattooing the right and left 
faces and posteriors with circles and scrolls almost mathematically exact; 
in their building and ornamenting of canoes and houses; in the laying out 
of their plantations, and particularly in the planting of their crops; in 
their measured paddling to “time and stroke;” and, above all, in their 
war-dance ; hence their practised eye always detected want of regularity in 
the stroke of the best-manned man-o'-war's boat, as well as in the most 
precise military drill. They paid great attention to nature, and profited 
largely and deservedly by the observance. They calculated their years 
‘by moons, and their moons by days, or rather by nights—as, indeed, they 
reckoned all their time—each having a distinct and appropriate name. 
The names of their moons were particularly appropriate, naturally re- 
minding one of the French nomenclature of the months introduced at 
the institution of the Empire. They divided the year into two great 
annual seasons of summer and winter, which they subdivided into four 
great agricultural times, of preparation, planting, cessation, and harvest. 
Their year commenced with spring; to which, and to the proper planting 
season, they were guided by the rising of certain constellations, particu- 
larly of Pleiades and of Orion; by the flowering of certain trees, especially 
a red-flowered creeper (Metrosideros sp.) ; by the sprouting of ferns, 
principally of the rauaruhe (Pteris esculenta) ; by the mating, moulting and 
change of note of birds; by the singing of insects; and by the arrival of the 
migratory pipiwharauroa, or little glossy euckoo. In planting their precious 
kumara, they carefully turned its young sprout to the sun; which position 
they also chose for the entrance of their kumara stores, so as to avoid the 
cold south. They attended to the appearance of the clouds, and the redness 
of the heavens at sunrise and sunset; to the flight and noise of birds and 
of insects; to the opening of flowers; to the apparent nearness of far-off 
hills; and the distinctness of distant sounds by night, for indications of 
coming wind and weather. They knew in what weather fish would bite, and 
what baits to use, and when certain fish were in season, and when crayfish 
