ee ee eee es ee ee 
Cotenso.—On the Colour Sense of the Maoris. 51 
pounamu (jade), etc. Each tint or shade of colour bore its own peculiar 
name plainly and naturally, or figuratively, and sometimes both. Their 
love, or great desire, for the possession of those colours, is best shown in 
their zealous and heavy labours in seeking and obtaining them (infra). 
Of their fine general discrimination of the various shades and hues and 
tints of colours. 
This, with me, was always a very pleasing subject. The bare present 
writing of what I have seen and heard serves to conjure up a host of pleasant 
reminiscences of the long past! indeed, I find it difficult to make a selection 
from many an interesting narration and discussion,—by night around our 
bivouac fires in the forest and in the wilderness: by day in travelling, and 
in resting, and (sometimes) when shut up for days together in their pas 
through rains and storms and swollen rivers. Foremost, here, I would 
mention their accurate description of a rainbow, of all its various colours, 
and of the difference between a bright and a faint one,—of the cause of its 
being so shown, and of its meaning, too (in their estimation),—and of the 
animated discussion that would sometimes arise upon it; not unfrequently 
proved by me to be correct (as to its colours) when a double rainbow 
appeared,—as then the colours were inverted. Their quick discernment of 
the iridescent hues of the feathers of a pigeon’s neck glancing in the sun- 
shine, when snugly ensconced aloft among the foliage of a tall white pine 
tree ; and their subsequent accurate description of them, and their com- 
parison of those changing tints (as to colours) with the ever-varying 
nacreous ones of the mother-of-pearl of shells (particularly Haliotide* and 
some TJrochide), and with the delicate evanescent hues of the bellies of 
several fishes when first caught,—as the mackerel, the scad, and the 
elephant-fish ; and also with the prismatic bubbles and scum of coal-tar 
floating away on the calm surface of the tide,—which, on a few occasions, 
some of my own domestic travelling Maoris had early seen at the Bay of 
Islands. Also, when sitting, resting on the edge of a cliff near the sea, to 
note their observations on the changes in the colours of its surface caused 
* Hence it was that the old Maoris devised and fitted out their admirable lure, made 
of a long cut and carved slip of the shell of the Haliotis iris, for sea-fishing with hook and 
line, particularly in the summer season for the kahawai (Arripis salar); when they 
paddled their little canoes, each manned by a single fisher, briskly through the ‘water, 
with their line and lure towing astern. And here, I should further observe, that it was 
not every shell of the Haliotis that would serve the ose ee ~ geod 8 A tend aid oad he 
would turn over and examine a score or two until he h 
eye, gave the exact tint of colour he required. And just so it Aled was in thels painfully 
selecting a bit of the same shell for the artificial eyes of their staffs, ete.—See ‘ Trans, 
N.Z, Inst.,” Vol. XIL., p. 77, note B. 
