CoLENSO. — On the Vegetable Food of the Ancient Neiv Zealanders. 11 



and so frighten and scare away the thievish rats from gnawing and injuring 

 the growing kumara roots. 



One striking pecuharity, however, should not be omitted— in which, too, 

 I think, they differed from all agricultural races — their national non-usage 

 of all and every kind of manure ; unless, indeed, their fresh annual layers of 

 dry gravel in their kumara plantations may be classed under this head. 

 But their whole inner-man revolted at such a thing ; and when the early 

 missionaries first used such substances in their kitchen-gardens it was 

 brought against them as a charge of high opprobrium.* And even in their 

 own potato planting in after years they would not use anything of the kind, 

 although they saw in the gardens of the missionaries the beneficial effects 

 arising from the use of manure ; and, as the potato loves a virgin, or a 

 strongly manured, soil, the Maoris chose rather to prepare fresh ground 

 every year, generally by felhug and burning on the outskirts of forests, with 

 all the extra labour of fencing against the pigs, rather than to use the 

 abominated manure. They also never watered their plants, not even in 

 times of great drought, with their plantations close to a river, when by 

 doing so they might have saved their crops. 



2. Of their Cultivated Food Plants. 

 1. The first in every respect and degree was the kumara. This plant is 

 an annual of tender growth, and was one of their vegetable main-stays. 

 Their use of this plant, as I take it, is from pre-historical times ; as their 

 many legends about it evidently show, which I purpose hereafter to lay 

 before you in a future paper. In suitable seasons and soils its yield was 

 very plentiful. It had, however, one potent enemy of the insect tribe, in 

 the form of a large larva of one of our largest moths, f This larva was 

 named anuhe, aivhato, hawato, and hotete, and as it rapidly devoured the 

 leaves of the young kumara, it was quite abhorred by the Maoris, who 



* A striking incident illustrating the above, which, once happened to me, may not be 

 out of place here. I was travelling, as usual, in the interior, where I had often been 

 before, and having brought up at a small village for the night, in the morning early I went 

 and gathered some remarkably fine succulent tops of the wild Brassica ("Maori cabbage" of 

 the settlers) which was running up to flower, for my breakfast ; a thing I almost daily or 

 oftener did ; these I brought to my tent, and gave to my Maori cook, who had travelled 

 with me many years. At breakfast, however, I missed them, having, instead, only some 

 very inferior leaves. On my enquiring after my fine vegetables, I was told that my 

 gathering them had been seen by some of the people of the village, who ran and told him 

 of it, and that he had therefore thrown them away, for they had grown on the river's 

 bank not far from the village privy. I should also add that the young man himself was 

 above all such notions, having often worked in my garden at home, and there used 

 manure. 



t See Trans. N. Z. Inst., Vol. XI., p. 30.3, and Vol. XII., p. 121. 



