34 Transactiom. — Miscellaneous. 



I now purpose in this paper to lay before you somewhat of its ideal, — 

 according to the notions and belief of the ancient Maoris. 



In so doing I shall have to narrate much that is strange and highly 

 figurative, if not sometimes fanciful ; yet, in general, simply so, and 

 containing nothing objectionable. And here it should be remembered, that 

 while the specialities and dress of a myth or legend are always false, the 

 legend itself always contains a kernel of truth. A mere invention scarcely 

 ever becomes a legend. Narratives, such as some I shall bring before you, 

 were by the ancient nations never wholly invented. And I think it will 

 appear to the tlioughtful mind that some of the main incidents involved in 

 these stories were derived from legends based on real occurrences ; disguised, 

 partly intentionally and partly not so, through their having been handed 

 down by mere oral tradition through a long course of ages. 



It is well-known that the kumara is not indigenous to New Zealand, 

 therefore it must have been introduced into the country at some past period ; 

 but when, whence, and by whom, is, I fear, wholly lost in the hoary ages of 

 antiquity. And here I may remark, in passing, another peculiarity con- 

 cerning this plant, — one that serves to increase the difficulty in pursuing 

 enquiries after it, (one, too, that I have long felt), viz. — that its true native 

 country is unknown. In many parts of the New World, and those, too, 

 isolated and widely apart from each other, — as New Zealand, Tahiti, the 

 Sandwich Islands, Easter Island, and intertropical South America, — this 

 plant is, and long has been, assiduously cultivated, (as it was here among 

 the New Zealanders when first visited by Europeans) ; but its real 

 indigenous habitat whence it first sprang is still unknown.* In this respect 

 it much resembles those other useful annual plants ever cultivated by man 

 from the earliest historical times, — maize, wheat, barley, oats, etc. 



And here I should also, perhaps, mention (in connection with the heading 

 of this paper, or this series of papers), that its name, as far as is known to 

 me, is, and ever has been, much the same, if not identically so, in all those 

 lands where it was found a prized plant of cultivation by their inhabitants.! 

 And its Maori name of kumara may be a highly and very proper figurative 

 one, well derived and full of meaning, and one quite in unison with the 

 modes of thinking and of naming once so congenial to the ancient New 

 Zealander, viz. — lord of the plantation, or cultivation, i,e. of all cultivated 

 food plants ; by the mere changing of the first letter k into t, as is not 



* See Essay on the Maori Eace, " Trans. N.Z. Inst.," Vol. I., § 53, xi. 



t " It is singular that the Quichua name for sweet potatos, which I found in the high 

 lands of Ecuador, is Cumar ; identical with the Polynesian Kumara, or Umara, and per- 

 haps pointing to the country whence the South Sea Islanders originally obtained this 

 esculent." — Dr. Seemann, in Flora Vitiensis, p. 170. See, also, my "Essay," loc. cit., of 

 an earlier date, § 53, pars xi.-xv. 



