26 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



up and prepare the karaka kernels for keeping ; properly prepared and kept 

 dry these would keep two or three years, or more. The fruits were collected 

 in baskets full, — placed by bushels in very large heated ovens, generally 

 made in the sea-beach above high-water-mark, and there baked and steamed 

 a considerable time, then taken out, put into loosely-woven baskets and laid 

 in running-water, and shaken and knocked about a little, to detach and to 

 carry off all of their outer skin and pulp, leaving the large seed intact, 

 within its own cartilaginous shell of fibrous network {endocarp). The 

 baking and steeping completely I'emoved all their poisonous qualities. After- 

 wards, they were spread out on mats and stages in the sun to di-y, and 

 when perfectly diied, stored away in baskets for future use. When used, 

 the kernels, still in their thin yet tough inner skin or husk, were steamed in 

 an earth oven, which softened them for eating. As an article of vegetable 

 food they were greatly and universally esteemed by the Maoris ; and were 

 very wholesome. 



3. The thu'd Avas the fruit of the Jiinau tree ( Elaocarpus dentatus) ; a tree 

 generally common throughout the islands, in the forests in the interior, but 

 not near the sea. Of this genus there are two, probably three, species in 

 New Zealand. The fruit, which grows plentifully in small loose bunches 

 (racemes), is a small drupe about the size of a large sloe, having a tolerably 

 large and peculiarly shaped furrowed nut within ; its skin is hardish, dry, 

 brittle, and shining, and of a dull ash or grey olive colour, and its flesh (if 

 such it may be termed) is also dryish, small in quantity, austere, and 

 altogether uneatable in its fresh and raw state, reminding me of the 

 taste of the acorn. Here, too, the ingenuity and patience of the Maoris 

 were particularly displayed. These fruits were collected in large quantities 

 when ripe from the ground under the Jwuni trees, and placed in water in 

 the hull of a canoe, or some similar large wooden trough ; there, after 

 steeping, they were well rubbed in the hands, the nuts, stalks, and bits of 

 broken skin strained out, the water carefully drained off, and the grey 

 coarse meal left as a residuum made into a kind of huge cake, cooked and 

 eaten. By some tribes, however, the fi-uits were not steeped in water at all, 

 but merely gathered up and pounded in a rude wooden mortar with a 

 pestle-like club, and the whole sifted through a cunningly-devised though 

 coarse sieve, made of the long, straight mid-ribs obtained from the linear 

 leaves of the tii-tree ( CordyUne australis ). To bake a big cake (20-301bs) of it 

 thoroughly, took two days. In colour the cake was a blackish-grey, darker 

 than barley or rye bread ; the rough unpalatable taste of the fruit in its raw 

 state being wholly lost in the cooking. Although a troublesome and 

 lengthy preparation, especially when the very small amount of floury meal 

 obtained from each drupe is considered, this food was greatly esteemed, and 



