12 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



always believed that they were rained down upon their plants. Sometimes 

 their numbers were almost incredible, as some of us have also seen in the 

 abundance of the more common caterpillar pests in certain seasons. I 

 myself have often marvelled at them in their number, and where they could 

 possibly have come from ; baskets full being carefully gathered from the 

 plants, and carried off and burnt. This job of gathering them, though 

 necessary, was always greatly disliked.* Long before the roots, or tubes, 

 of the kumara were of full size, they were regularly laid under contribution ; 

 each plant was visited by old Avomen, with their little sharp-pointed spades 

 or dibbles, who were quite up to their work, and a few of the largest young 

 tubers selected and taken away, and the earth around the plant loosened, 

 when it was again "hilled" up; — an operation not unlike that of our 

 potato hoeing, only much more carefully performed, as at the same time 

 they took away every withered leaf and upper outlying rootlet, and weak 

 sprout. Those young tubers were carefully scraped, and half-dried on clean 

 mattings in the sun — being turned every day and carefully covered from 

 the dew, and when dry either eaten or put away in baskets as a kind of 

 sweetish confection or preserved tuber, f greatly esteemed by them, either 

 raw, or soaked and mashed up with a little warm water, and called kao. 



At the general digging of the crop in the late autumn (called by the 

 Maoris the hauhakenga), but always before the first frost, great care was 

 taken in the taking up of the roots, when they were carefully sorted accord- 

 ing to size and variety (if of two or more varieties in the one plantation), all ' 

 bruised, broken, or slightly injured ones being put on one side for early use ; 

 then they were gathered up into large flax baskets, always newly made, and 

 in due time stowed away in the proper store ; taking great care of doing so 

 only on a perfectly dry sun-shiny day, as they had to guard against mouldi- 

 ness of every kind, which was destructive and dreaded. 



It is impossible to estimate, even approximately, the immense quantity 

 of this root which was annually raised by the old Maoris ; especially before 



* A few years after I came to Hawke's Bay to reside — I think in 1846 — the tribe of 

 the late chief Karaitiana, who lived near me, had their large kumara plantation regularly 

 set upon by those immense larvte. The chiefs borrowed all my turkeys, which were put 

 into their kumara plantation, and in a short time they cleared the whole ground of those 

 destructive creatures. 



t In an old work on Gardening and Botany I find the following: — "The sweet 

 potato"' (Batatas edulis), Sir Joseph Banks observes, "was used in England as a delicacy 

 long before the introduction of our potatoes ; it was imported in considerable quantities 

 from Spain and the Canaries, and was supposed to possess the power of restoring decayed 

 vigour. The kissing comfits of Falstaff, and other confections of similar imaginary quali- 

 ties with which our ancestors were duped, were principally made of these and Eryngo 

 yoots," — Doiv's General System, Vol. IV., p. 401, 



