152 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



shot a bird in Hawke Bay ; he showed it to the old natives around him, 

 who all said it was a native bird ; some said XDOsitively it was a koreke (a 

 New Zealand quail) ; others, a moliokura, or a moJwpataJd (two species of 

 small rails). However, it was sent to me, and it proved to be the intro- 

 duced Californian quail. I have long ago known that in all such matters 

 the natives are not now to be depended on ;* the oldest ones from their not 

 having seen the animal or plant (in question) for many years, or perhaps 

 not all ; the younger ones from then- never having known it ! 



The dog is mentioned in then oldest traditions and myths. Dogs were 

 sometimes sacrificed, in the earliest times, to obtain the favour of the gods 

 who were invoked ; notably so, as is circumstantially related in the legend 

 of the migration hither of the chief Turi and his party, who came from 

 Hawaiki in the canoe Aotea, and landed on the west coast of this island. 

 Turi is the (claimed) ancestor of the Whanganui tribes, and when on their 

 voyage they had landed on a small island to refit and repair, a dog, whose 

 name was Tangakakariki, was sacrificed with great formalities to appease 

 the gods and to obtain them favourable winds. And this ancient Polynesian 

 rite of sacrificing the dog may serve to explain two things respecting it 

 which I have not yet referred to ; the one took place at Tahiti, when Capt. 

 Wallis, who discovered the island (two years before Cook visited it), was 

 there ; and it is thus related by him — but I should first mention that 

 Captain AVallis was obliged to have two desperate engagements with the 

 natives on his arrival, who courageously attacked his ship in great numbers ; 

 and it was only after killing several of them, and " landing and destroying 

 more than fifty canoes, many of which were sixty feet long," that they gave 

 over, and peace was made. Captain Wallis says : — " At 2 p.m. (on the day 

 of the last fight) about ten of the natives came out of the wood with green 

 boughs in their hands, which they stuck up near the sea- side and retired. 

 After this they brought several hogs with their legs tied, * '■' * and 

 some dogs with their fore-legs tied over their heads, * '■' * also several 

 bundles of cloth, and placing them on the beach called to us on board to 

 take them away. At first we could not perfectly discover of what this 

 peace-offering consisted. We guessed at the hogs and the cloth, but 

 seeing the dogs, with their fore-legs appearing over the hinder part of the 

 neck, rise up several times and run a little way in an erect posture, we took 

 them for some strange unknown animal, and were very impatient to have a 

 nearer view of them. The boat was therefore sent on shore ; our people 



* Hence the many errors in Maori names of plants, etc., given in the " New Zealand 

 Institute Transactions" (passim) and in other modern publications, which seem to have 

 been collected by any and everybody and set down at random, and so doing positive and 

 lasting injury ! 



