CoLENSO. — 0)1 the Colour Sense of the Maoris. 51 



pounamu (jade), etc. Each tint or shade of colour bore its own peculiar 

 name plainly and naturally, or figuratively, and sometimes both. Their 

 love, or great desire, for the possession of those colours, is best shown in 

 their zealous and heavy labours in seeking and obtaining them (infra). 



(2.) 

 Of their fine general discrimination of the various shades and hues mid 



tints of colours. 

 This, with me, was always a very pleasing subject. The bare present 

 writmg of what I have seen and heard serves to conjure up a host of pleasant 

 reminiscences of the long past ! indeed, I find it difficult to make a selection 

 from many an interesting narration and discussion, — by night around our 

 bivouac fires in the forest and in the wilderness ; by day in travelling, and 

 in resting, and (sometimes) when shut up for days together in their ^as- 

 through rains and storms and swollen rivers. Foremost, here, I would 

 mention their accurate description of a rainbow, of all its various colours, 

 and of the difference between a bright and a faint one, — of the cause of its 

 being so shown, and of its meaning, too (in their estimation), — and of the 

 animated discussion that would sometimes arise upon it ; not unfrequently 

 proved by me to be correct (as to its colom-s) when a double rainbow 

 appeared, — as then the colours were inverted. Their quick discernment of 

 the iridescent hues of the feathers of a pigeon's neck glancing in the sun- 

 shine, when snugly ensconced aloft among the foliage of a tall white pine 

 tree ; and their subsequent accurate description of them, and their com- 

 parison of those changing tints (as to colours) with the ever-varying 

 nacreous ones of the mother-of-pearl of shells (particularly Haliotidoi* and 

 some Trochidce), and with the delicate evanescent hues of the bellies of 

 several fishes when first caught, — as the mackerel, the scad, and the 

 elephant-fish ; and also with the prismatic bubbles and scum of coal-tar 

 floating away on the calm sm-face of the tide, — which, on a few occasions, 

 some of my own domestic travelling Maoris had early seen at the Bay of 

 Islands. Also, when sitting, resting on the edge of a cliff near the sea, to 

 note their observations on the changes in the colours of its surface caused 



* Hence it was that the old Maoris devised and fitted out their admirable lure, made 

 of a long cut and carved slip of the shell of the Haliotis iris, for sea-fishing with hook and 

 line, particularly in the summer season for the haliawai {Arripis salar) ; when they 

 paddled their little canoes, each manned by a single fisher, briskly through the water, 

 with their line and lure towing astern. And here, I should further observe, that it was 

 not every shell of the Haliotis that would serve the skilled Maori fisher's purpose ; no, he 

 would turn over and examine a score or two until he had found one which, to his searching 

 eye, gave the exact tint of colour he required. And just so it also was in their painfully 

 selecting a bit of the same shell for the artificial eyes of their staffs, etc. — See "Trans. 

 N.Z. Inst.," Vol. XII., p. 77, note B. 



