376 Essays. 
the peculiar bias seams skilfully introduced in their weaving, in order to 
make the mat fall in graceful folds over the shoulders. Even their back- 
straps for carrying their common loads they sometimes plaited of scraped 
flax fibre, dyed of two or three colours. It was the love of the beautifi 1, also, 
which led them to seek after and use other fibrous substances only obtained 
with much more labour, flax being everywhere so plentiful. Hence, too, 
their love of neat, pretty, elegant, contrast ornaments, of graceful drooping 
feathers, as of the white crane, or bunches of snowy down from the gannet 
and albatros, of the small feathered skins of the huia, the fuz, and the little 
glossy cuckoo, of their female head-dresses made of the snowy down-like 
epidermis from the leaves of the Astelia and Celmisia plants, the graceful 
small-leaved Clematis, and the elegant climbing Lycopodium, and of the white 
fillets from the paper-mulberry tree for the dark raven locks of the men. 
Hence, too, their scented necklaces of the odorous grass karetu, of the roniu 
flowers, and of the piripiri moss, enclosed within the neat spotted feathers of 
the paradise duck. Hence their prizing the scented gums of the tarata and 
of the taramea plants as perfumes ; the latter, an alpine plant, only collected 
with much labour and danger. It was owing to their love of the beautiful 
that they so tastefully decorated their canoes with plumes of feathers, and 
with elegant long flowing pennants of feathery tufts, which so loudly elicited 
the praises of Cook and the early navigators. Through this love of the | 
beautiful they were led to chequer and make regular dark spirals on their 
yellow reeds for lining their chiefs’ houses, which was done by winding slips 
of green flax at regular distances around them and passing them through the 
fire. It was owing to this that they carved so much and so regularly, even 
down to their canoe-balers and paddles, and the wooden necks of their large 
calabashes. Hence, too, in all their good carvings, however quaint, “ the true 
line of beauty, the curve,” is found, which they skilfully managed to produce 
without drawn plans, copy, or pair of compasses. 
31. The educated New Zealander possessed many acquirements. In him, 
sound and practical knowledge of the utile and dulce—the useful and the 
ornamental—were very often to be found combined. It was not with them 
as with us—one man knowing one trade or occupation, and another another ; 
with them, generally, one clever man knew all things, while every one, at 
least, knew several useful and practical ones. Invariably, in whatever they 
sought to learn, they strove to excel; hence they generally succeeded. They 
uniformly counted very well and without difficulty up to a hundred, and 
some among them could go further; their term mano, however, now used for 
a thousand, scarcely definitely meant that number. Besides their common 
counting by units, they had another mode of counting by pairs, which prin- 
cipally obtained for baskets of sweet potatoes and fish, and a few other 
