CotEenso.—On the Colour Sense of the Maoris. 59 
quick at detecting any light coloured variation in the plumage of birds, 
(well-knowing the few genera that sometimes produced albinos), and in the 
foliage, and fruits, and wood of plants, as well as in shells; all such, and 
every variety of colour, bore its own proper name. 
A little botanical incident bearing on this subject may be briefly told :— 
On one of Mr, A. Cunningham’s visits to New Zealand, he went to the 
kauri forests botanizing. While there he heard from his intelligent Maori 
companions of two kinds of kawri known to them, but only by the difference 
in their names, arising from the variety in colour of their timber. This set 
him on the search after the new Dammara pine, No. 2! but after much toil 
and enquiry, and the obtaining of a quantity of foliage specimens, he gave 
it up, concluding that such slight difference in colour (which did exist) 
might arise from the soil, or situation, or’ from the varying specimens of 
timber having been cut from both the sunny and the shady sides of the same 
tree ; this latter opinion, however, the Maoris (and the few European 
sawyers then at work among them) always denied. It was one of my dear 
friend’s last bequests to me to follow that enquiry up; but, like himself, I 
never could make anything of it. There is, however, a difference in the 
colour of some of the kauri timber, exclusive of the prized ‘* mottled”’ kind, 
for which the old Maoris had, as usual, their own proper distinctive names. 
Of their dark and sombre colours, not black. 
Of natural ones, they distinguished at a distance the heavy dark-green of 
the clumps or thickets of some trees, such as karaka, mataii, etc., and 
correctly named them: also, of their dark-coloured, edible fruits, when 
ripening, high up on their topmost branches, as of the muataii pine 
( Podocarpus spicata),— so as to save themselves the trouble of a high, 
dangerous, and always disagreeable climbing, to examine them. The peculiar 
black-blue colour of the sky on certain nights, dependent on the state of the 
atmosphere ; also its colour at various times of the night ; and particularly 
the two dark pear-shaped spaces in the Milky Way, near Centaurus and the 
Southern Cross (called Coal-sacks by the early navigators) ; also of the ever- 
varying storm-clouds, for which they had more than 40 names ; and the dark 
colour of the sea, in calm weather, over rocky shoals, and in deep holes off 
the coast; the slight shades of difference between the colours of their own 
dark hair; the difference between the colours of several dark-plumaged birds 
closely allied, as of various shags and gulls, and also of some forest birds ; 
the difference between the varying blue-black and brown-black colours of the 
backs of several of the larger sea-fishes and of eels; and were particularly 
knowing in the matter of dark-green* coloured “ sun-burnt” potatoes, some 
* See note § 3, clause 3, supra ; hence that name, ; 
