I ae tn ae Se a A es AE ge ee ee a TE en, enema 
Cotenso.—On the Colour Sense of the Maoris. 61 
tutu shrub (Coriaria ruscifolia) to obtain a blue-black, sitchie was some- 
times used for fancy and ornamental work,—as in weaving graceful little 
baskets, etc., for a first-born or beloved child,—it had a very peculiar hue ; 
and for the purpose of body-tattooing they used various kinds of charcoal, 
both animal and vegetable, obtained from several peculiar sources, and 
manufactured in a highly curious manner with much labour and skill. For 
colouring black their narrow and thin wooden slips, or carefully prepared 
laths of totara wood,—with which they plentifully ornamented the interior 
panels on the walls of their chiefs’ houses, in order to set off to advantage 
the white and yellow filagree work interlaced thereon to regular patterns, 
as well as the lighter yellow reeds beneath,—they passed the laths one by 
one repeatedly and quickly through a fire, partly charring the outside, until 
they had made them of the proper hue; this done the slips were well rubbed 
and made quite clean and glossy, and fixed in their places. 
Of their sober neutral colours neither dark nor light. 
These, composed of various shades and of nearly all colours, they knew 
well, both naturally and artificially. It was in this particular portion of 
their discriminating knowledge of the shades of colours, that I early felt the 
more deeply interested, and often indeed proved their correct descriptions of 
them, with no small degree of astonishment ; for by it I was not unfrequently 
led, in my early botanizing, to note down and to obtain some new plants or 
varieties of plants. Even while writing this, I well recollect their state- 
ments to me (40 years ago and more), concerning certain plants,—as various 
species of rushes and of sedges, of scented Hepatica, of river Conferve, and 
of. sea-weeds, and particularly of a Chara, and of a curiously-coloured 
species of Conferva (possessing a steel-blue cast of colour), which I was led 
to seek in out-of-the-way holes, through casually hearing from an old woman 
of their different shades of colour. Hence, too, they discriminated between 
the different sorts of kwmara, and of taro, when the plants were young and 
growing, by the hue of their leaves (and also of the various kinds of potatoe), 
and that when travelling along by the plantations, outside of the fence. Also, 
the varieties of New Zealand flax (Phormiwm), more than fifty in number, 
were detected by the hue of their leaves,—all being alike green, yet all 
slightly differing in the shade of that colour, and only three or four of them 
(at most) in the shape and size of their leaves. I have sometimes been 
amused, when travelling, in hearing the descriptive remarks (among others) 
which would arise from my party, on the baskets of cooked potatoes being 
placed before them, kindly yet hurriedly boiled on their arrival at a village. 
On the top of each basket, according to custom, was placed a handful ot 
need greens (of sow-thistle tops, or of wild cabbage-spronts), of such as 
