CoLENSO. — On the Maori Baces of New Zealand. 353 



carving, they used a tMu piece of obsidian. One of their most ingenious 

 instruments was a kind of wimble, or drill, composed of a small cylindrical 

 piece of wood, produced to a point at one end, to wbicb was fixed a small 

 angular quartz stone ; two strings Avere also fastened at the opposite end, 

 these being repeatedly pulled by both hands in a contrary direction (the 

 stone to be bored, &c., being firmly held by the feet), a hole was in time 

 perforated. They used the wedge (rnatahalii) in splitting trees ; and another 

 simple machine, composed of a short lever with short straps, on the plan of a 

 tourniquet, was also used by them in expressing oil from the seeds of the 

 titongi {Alectryon excelsuni), &c., &c. For water vessels they commonly used 

 the hard and fully ripened rind of the cultivated gourd, hue, which sometimes 

 attained to a large size, hardened by baking, sun and fire. The larger 

 calabashes were selected for potting fat birds, and similar delicacies, in their 

 own fat. Oil was often kept in the smaller calabashes ; also in dilated joints 

 of kelp, and in the stout double air-bladder of the curious sea-porcupine fish 

 (TetraodoJi sp.) 



16. They cultivated the ornamental as well as the practical. This has 

 been already shown (in part) in the manufacture of their clothing mats, in 

 their canoe decoration, in their carving, &c. Their greenstone ear and neck 

 ornaments belong to this class ; which, from their shape, polish, and tenuity, 

 as well as from the well-known hardness of the stone, must have taken an 

 enormous time to finish. The mako, or teeth of the long-snouted porpoise 

 (a species of mammal rarely indeed to be met with, — driven on shore, at 

 least), was also greatly prized for ear ornaments. The black and white tail 

 feathers of the bird huia {Neomorpha gould'd), and the snowy plumes of the 

 hotuhu (Ardea Jiavirostris) , were greatly prized, to adorn the heads of 

 their chiefs ; the former were snared in their proper forests, by skilled 

 natives imitating their call ; the latter was (in the Northern Island) rarely 

 seen, and yet they sometimes managed to capture it alive, and to keep it 

 so in a cage for a considerable time for the sake of its feathers, which 

 they regularly plucked. The white down of the albatros and of the 

 gannet was also worn by the chiefs both in their hair and ears, as 

 ornaments ; while the women often wore suspended to their necks the 

 mottled feathers of the paradise duck and of the little blue teal of the 

 mountain rivers. They also ornamented themselves by wearing in tbeir ears 

 the beak and feathered skin of the huia, deprived of its tail-feathers; and 

 also of the tui or parson bird, and of the elegant little glossy cuckoo, or 

 pipiwharauroa {Chrysococcyx lucidus), while the long tail-feathers of the 

 larger cuckoo, or koheperoa (JEudynamis taitensis), they also wore in their 

 hair. Flowers were also sometimes used for this purpose ; especially the 

 elegant c^xcibiug puawananga {Clematis sp.), and neat loaewaeliouhou {Lyco- 

 45 



