376 msmjs. 



tLe peculiar bias seams skilfully iutroduced iii their weaving, in order to 

 make the mat fall in graceful folds over the shoulders. Even their back- 

 straps for carrying their common loads they sometimes plaited of scraped 

 flax fibre, dyed of two or three colours. It was the love of the beautiful, also, 

 which led them to seek after and use other fibrous substances only obtained 

 with much more labour, flax being everywhere so plentiful. Hence, too, 

 their love of ifeat, pretty, elegant, contrast ornaments, of graceful drooping 

 feathers, as of the white crane, or bunches of snowy dovi^n from the gannet 

 and albatros, of the small feathered skins of the huia, the tui, and the little 

 glossy cuckoo, of their female head-dresses made of the snowy down-like 

 epidermis from the leaves of the Astelia and Cehnisia plants, the graceful 

 small-leaved Clematis, and the elegant climbing Lycopodium, and of the white 

 fillets from the paper-mulberry tree for the dark raven locks of the men. 

 Hence, too, their scented necklaces of the odorous grass Imretu, of the roniio 

 flowers, and of the piripiri moss, enclosed within the neat spotted feathers of 

 the paradise duck. Hence their prizing the scented gums of the tarata and 

 of the taramea plants as perfumes ; the latter, an alpine plant, only collected 

 with much labour and danger. It was owing to their love of the beautiful 

 that they so tastefully decorated their canoes with plumes of feathers, and 

 with elegant long flowing pennants of feathery tufts, which so loudly elicited 

 the praises of Cook and the early navigators. Through this love of the 

 beautiful they were led to chequer and make regular dark spirals on their 

 yellow reeds for lining their chiefs' houses, which was done by winding slips 

 of green flax at regular distances around them and passiog them through the 

 fire. It was owing to this that they carved so much and so regularly, even 

 down to their canoe-balers and paddles, and the wooden necks of their large 

 calabashes. Hence, too, in all their good carvings, however quaint, " the true 

 line of beauty, the curve," is found, which they skilfully managed to produce 

 without drawn plans, copy, or pair of compasses. 



31. The educated New Zealander possessed many acquirements. In him, 

 sound and practical knowledge of the utile and dulce — the useful and the 

 ornamental — were very often to be found combined. It was not with them 

 as with us — one man knowing one trade or occupation, and another another ; 

 with them, generally, one clever man knew all things, while every one, at 

 least, knew several useful and practical ones. Invariably, in whatever they 

 sought to learn, they strove to excel; hence they generally succeeded. They 

 uniformly counted very well and without difficulty up to a hundred, and 

 some among them could go further ; their term 7nano, however, now used for 

 a thousand, scarcely definitely meant that number. Besides their common 

 counting by units, they had another mode of counting by pairs, which prin- 

 cipally obtained for baskets of sweet potatoes and fish, and a few other 



