TRANSACTIONS 



OF THE 



NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE, 



18 8 0. 



I.— MISCELLANEOUS. 



Art. I. — On the Vegetable Food of the Ancient , New Zealandera 



before Cook's Visit. 



By W. CoLENSo, F.L.S. 



[Read before the Haxche's Bay Philosophical Institute, 9th August and 

 13f/i September, 1880.] 

 Two gross errors have largely and repeatedly been industriously published 

 concerning the ancient Maoris, and these, too, from our first knowledge of 

 theai : — (1) their utter ignorance of almost every art pertaining to society ; 

 and (2) their great want of food. Hence, it has been also said, almost as 

 a necessary deduction therefrom, that the poor creatures were necessarily in 

 a savage and starving state ; from which their subsequent intercourse with 

 Europeans had gradually served to raise them. For my own part, I more 

 than doubt all this elevated assertion of their civihzed Northern visitors ; 

 indeed, I am quite prepared wholly to deny it, as far as relates to the 

 Maoris of the North Island. In some of my former papers concerning the 

 Maoris, read before you, I have endeavoured to show, plainly and truly, a 

 little of what they really were as to very many of the useful and the orna- 

 mental arts which once flourished among them (and more I yet hope to 

 bring forward as bearing on this head) ; this serves to meet the first-men- 

 tioned of those two errors : while, to-night, I purpose in part taking up the 

 second, and, in doing so, shall confine myself to a consideration of their 

 vegetable food in the olden time (a subject but very imperfectly known) ; 

 and also show that they, the natives of this North Island, had attained to a 

 very high system of agriculture, which was purely national and loved, and 

 passionately, judiciously, and universally followed everywhere among them. 

 To me — after so long a residence as mine, of nearly half a century — the 

 origin of this belief of their having been greatly in want of food is clear and 



