Haast. — On an ancient Native Burial Place. 89 



discovered under about 2| feet of soil. The same belonged to a body which 

 had also been buried in the same position as the former, together with three 

 stone implements, of which the edges were highly polished, and which the 

 contractor (Mr. Leathern) kindly handed over to me for the Museum. Also, 

 these bones were in a very fragile state, the skull, like that of the former 

 skeleton, in moving falling to pieces along the sutures. The three stone im- 

 plements found with this skeleton are manufactured of the same kind of chert 

 as that previously alluded to, and are of three well-defined forms, namely, a 

 chisel 8| inches long and 1 inch broad, an adze 5^ inches long by 1 J inches 

 broad, both at the cutting edge, and a peculiar tool, best described as a gouge, 

 evidently for hollowing or planing out; it is 7 inches long, and contracts to 

 half an inch at the sharp edge. 



We possess several implements of the same pattern found at the Itakaia 

 and several other parts of this island and of different sizes, but although the 

 Rev, J. Stack, as well as myself, showed them to a number of Maoris, some of 

 them aged men, they invariably answered that the use of this latter well- 

 shaped implement was quite unknown to them. The drawings of these three 

 implements added to these notes (PI. IV.) will make you better acqainted than 

 words can do with their characteristic form. During the next few days several 

 more skeletons were excavated, but, although I generally managed to obtain 

 the skulls, the stone implements found with them had disappeared, notwith- 

 standing that I offered to the workmen a fair price for them. However, from 

 the information obtained through one of the workmen, it appears that each 

 had generally three stone implements buried with it, which were of the same 

 form and material as those previously described, and that no greenstone 

 implements or ornaments had been met with. Thus, on the 8th October, I 



with some of the bones 



found the day before, and which were in the same fragile state, and on the 



dis 



few days previously. 



skeletons 



evidence to conclude that this locality was used as a burial place before the 

 shell-fish eaters occupied the ground, because the more or less faint lines of 

 vegetable soil in the deposit under review are'generally very much disturbed 

 above and near the skeletons, and there is no doubt in my mind that the 

 uppermost beds were only formed after the older occupants, probably the 

 Moa-hunters, who were inhabitants, or at least frequent visitors of the Moa- 

 bone Point Cave and flat close by, and who buried here their dead, had long 

 left the ground. In the first instance, there is not the least sign of ovens 



■bone 



>~ 



