478 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
aye, thousands of Maori words that are not to be found in the works he 
mentions ; and it was my certain knowledge of this fact which led me to 
undertake the heavy work of the Polynesian (or New Zealand) Lexicon,* 
which knowledge was also both increased and confirmed in me as the years 
of labour therein rolled on. 
(2.) That the translation of the Bible into Maori was not the work of 
Archdeacon Maunsell. The New Testament was translated and in use 
before Archdeacon Maunsell arrived in New Zealand ; so were the Book of 
Psalms, and other Books and parts of Books of the Old Testament; the 
original translation of the New Testament being mainly the work of the 
late Dr. Williams, the first Bishop of Waiapu. That Dr. Maunsell largely 
aided (under Bishop Selwyn) the zealous hard-working band of coadjutors 
concerned in the present edition is correct. 
(3.) Then, most astonishing of all, Mr. Stack goes on to quote even 
Greek words from the Septuagint, to meet certain Maori words used in the 
present translation of the Old Testament! 
In the conclusion of his paper, Mr. Stack winds up with saying,—“ In 
common with the colour-blind the Maori confounded the lighter tints of 
several different colours,—and were blind to blue.” 
In my paper (supra) I have shown the contrary of these assertions ; and 
I bring this sentence forward here (re the blue) just to meet one of Mr. 
Stack’s chief and earliest Septuagint quotations. He salle’ us, taxevOov— 
blue (Exodus xxv., 4). 
(1.) Is he aware that this Greek word means other dark colours equally 
with blue ? 
‘‘ By Homer, Odysseus’ hair is likened to the hyacinth (sactrfoe), and 
the ancient Greek commentators, to whom the conception was not yet 50 
foreign as to us, quite correctly refer the simile to the black colour (péas)- 
Pindar speaks in the same sense of violet locks. With Homer, also, the 
Word xiavoc (our cyan) is the deepest black. The mourning garment a 
Thetis he calls cvéveo, and at the same time ‘ black as no other garment. 
The same colour-term is applied to the storm-cloud, and the black cloud of 
death, and several times by adding pédac it is distinctly explained as black.” 
—Gieger, Frankfort Lectures, 1867). 
(2.) Would Mr, Stack be surprised to hear that perhaps the Hebrew 
word in that place (tepaylét) does not, or may not, mean blue? This - 
what some of the old and learned doctors have gait about it in Haas SOF 
ar Nie oe ee 
* I have often—aye, almost pa Sieg RL) that eens : 
| codigo had such been done, ae ee ot es : 
