CoLENSO. — On the Maori Baces of Neio Zealand. B77 



articles. The many and varied acquirements of the different parts and kinds 

 of house building ; of making their many different canoes ; and of all kinds 

 of wooden and stone implements for use and defence ; of cultivating success- 

 fully the soil ; of making several kinds of very ingenious traps for catching 

 animals ; of bird and rat snaring ; and of sea, river, and swamp fishing in all 

 its various branches ; of carving, tattooing, weaving, spinning, and plaiting ; 

 and of making sails and nets of many kinds ; of skill in paddling, steering, 

 and navigating a canoe ; of swimming, climbing, and parrying spear thrusts ; 

 of music, singing, and dancing ; of surgery and oratory ; of genealogies and 

 relationships ; of old feuds, and their causes, and their unsettled scores ; of 

 boundaries, and of roads and tracks to distant places, not to mention all the 

 needful acquirements respecting the fapu, traditions, songs, chaunts, exor- 

 cisms, and very many customs. In bygone years the writer has not unfre- 

 quently looked with quiet admiration at such an individual diligently and 

 unassumingly working at his many varied occupations, often, when tired at 

 one, dropping it and taking up another ; and in doing so he has thought, — 

 what an example such an one was of the successful pursuit of knowledge 

 under diificulties ! How truly he deserved to be called a " tohunga''' (a living 

 cyclopaedia or skilled man) ! At such times the exquisite and not inappli- 

 cable lines of Hurdis (learnt in childhood) would rush into the mind, and 

 may not be wholly out of place here : — 



" But most of all it wins my admiration, 

 To view the structure of this little work. — 



Mark it well, within, without, 



No tool had he that wrought, no knife to cut, 



No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, 



No glue to join ; [his hand alone] was all 



And yet how neatly finished ! 



Fondly then 



"We boast of excellence, whose noblest skill 

 Instinctive genius foils." 



32. It is evident they possessed the germs of knowledge of the first prin- 

 ciples of mechanics ; but it appeared more like a decaying remnant of ancient 

 wisdom, or a growth nipped in its bud, than a new or recent development. 

 They seem scarcely ever to have improved the one original idea. The powers 

 of the inclined plane they knew and used in the wedge, and in moving heavy 

 weights up a prepared slope. In using the lever they well knew the difference 

 between a high or low, near or far-off fulcrum. The wheel and axle, rude as 

 it was, they had in their quartz-pointed drill or wimble ; the screw, in the 

 " Spanish tourniquet," for expressing of oil, &c. ; and the pulley in rollers 

 for their canoes and for hoisting up heavy v.eights to their high stages for 

 great feasts, which rollers they often smoothed and Avetted, or covered with 

 wet sea-weed, to make the body to be moved the better to glide. 

 48 



