Wouters.—Mythologg and Traditions of the Maori. 123 
the bush ; but when he had cooked some meat, the savoury smell brought 
them all back. 
In the course of time Tura’s wife found herself pregnant, and when her 
time was come, there came to her several old women, each carrying a sharp 
flint and some soft rags. Tura asked his wife what these meant with the 
sharp flints. She answered, ‘‘ To cut me open, and to take out our child. 
We know of no other way for a child to come into the world. The mother 
often dies under the operation, but the child is saved alive.’’ Tura told 
her that there was a natural way for a child, and then drove all the women 
away, and put his wife into a house by herself. By and by a child was 
born, the first natural birth of that place. 
Tura stayed at that place till his child could run about. Then one day, 
while his wife was doing his head, she asked, ‘‘ Tura, what means that, 
there are white hair mixed with the dark?’ ‘ That,’ he answered, 
‘means decay, and reminds me that I am drawing towards death.’’ Now 
he felt a strong desire to go to his own home, where he had left a wife and 
ason. After much crying he took leave of his second wife and child, and 
began to travel homeward. It was through an uninhabited country, and 
he walked for many days with little or no food. At last he found a dead 
whale stranded on the shore. Being now so weak that he felt he could go 
no farther, he made a small hut, laid in some store of meat from the dead 
whale, and then had to lay down, being now very ill. Every time his 
breath returned, he called the name of his first son in his own home, 
“‘Traturoto, Iraturoto.”” The son, at the same time, was dreaming every 
night that his father lay sick and alone, and was calling him. So he set 
out to find his father in the direction indicated to him in his dreams. At 
last he found him, and nursed him till he was better, and then brought 
him home. 
The end of the Maori tales worth translating. 
. 
Arr. IX.—On the Building Materials of Otago. By Wiuu1am N. Briar, C.E. 
[Read before the Otago Institute, 13th July and 21st September, 1875.] 
The Building Materials of Otago. 
Any information we have on the building materials of Otago is so inter- 
spersed with extraneous matter that it is comparatively useless. Even the 
initiated, whose duties require frequent reference to the subject, have con- 
siderable difficulty in availing themselves of the researches that have been 
made 
