52 Tranmctions. — MisceUaneoils. 



by a i3assing cloud ; and then to hear of how, in former days, the proper 

 skilled scout* perched on a cliff would descry the approaching shoal of 

 mackerel, or kahmoai, or other annual summer fish, from the change in 

 the colour of the sea, and would direct accordingly the takers with the big 

 seine nets in their canoes. f From similar positions, too, we ourselves, 

 when perched on the cliffy heights overlooking the deeply-embayed tidal 

 arms and reaches of the sea, — whether at the Bay of Islands, on the many 

 inlets and branches of the Kawakawa, Waikare, Waitangi, or Kerikeri 

 rivers, — or at Eangaunu, — or at Whangaruru, or at Ngunguru, — or at 

 Kaipara ! — or at Whangarei, with its multitude of inlets, creeks and 

 branches, — we ourselves have often received great benefits from their 

 accurate sight, well-knowing, even from a distance, the precise state of 

 the tide on those muddy flats and in those mouths of rivers below, and that 

 solely from the hue of the water there ; and, in so-doing we were often 

 saved a considerable part of what was always a disagreeable job. For, in all 

 those places, owing to there being no beaches, and the banks clothed with 

 dense vegetation to the water's edge, with a belt, or thicket, of close-growing 

 outlying mangroves, the usual rise and fall of the tide could not be seen. 



Their quickness of vision also instantaneously and correctly detected 

 what kind of fish it was that had fleetly passed us at sea, when out together 

 in our boat or canoe, and that more from its peculiar colour, than from its 

 form and manner of swimming. And so with their small fresh -water fishes, 

 many of which closely resemble each other (including not only the various 

 species, but, also, the differing varieties of those species, some of which also 

 change their colours with age, as well as before and after the spawning 

 season) ; these were all respectively known by their hues and mottlings, 

 and each kind and variety bore its proper distinctive name. More than 

 once, in my early travelling, has some kind Maori with me (either before 

 or behind, in the long straggling single file), gathered a flowering branch of 

 Solanum aviculare, and of Wahlenhergia gracilis, and of IF. sa.^'^coZa,. and kept 

 it for me ; because his quick eye had noticed the change of colour in their 

 flowers, from blue, and from lilac to white ; which change in those two 

 genera is not unfrequently the case : and not unfrequently was my attention 

 loudly called to a large spider (of the species so very common and un- 

 pleasant in the open shrubby wilderness) whose main colouring and 

 markings were different from others. Sometimes, also, in our journeyings, 

 we should find a few large stray tail or wing feathers (generally one at a 

 time), all more or less of a common brown colour, but with different light 



* " Huer," in Cornwall, on the pilchard seine-hshery ; and done by the old Maoris, by 

 signs, much as it is still practised there. 



f See " Trans. N.Z. Inst.," Vol. XIIL, p. 44, for an instance.- 



