CoLENso. — On the Colour Sense of the Maoris. 59 



quick at detecting any light coloured variation in the plumage of birds, 

 (well-kuovviug the few genera that sometimes produced albinos), and iu the 

 foliage, and fruits, and wood of plants, as well as iu shells ; all such, and 

 every variety of colour, bore its own proper name. 



A little botanical incident bearing on this subject may be briefly told : — 

 On one of Mr. A. Cunningham's visits to New Zealand, he went to the 

 kauri forests botanizing. While there he heard from his intelligent Maori 

 companions of two kinds of kauri known to them, but only by the difference 

 in their names, arising from the variety in colour of their timber. This set 

 him on the search after the new Dammara pine, No. 2 ! but after much toil 

 and enquiry, and the obtaining of a quantity of foliage specimens, he gave 

 it up, concluding that such slight difference in colour .(which did exist) 

 might arise fi"om the soil, or situation, or fi-om the varying specimens of 

 timber having been cut from both the sunny and the shady sides of the same 

 tree ; this latter opinion, however, the Maoris (and the few European 

 sawyers then at work among them) always denied. It was one of my dear 

 friend's last bequests to me to follow that enquiry up ; but, like himself, I 

 never could make anything of it. There is, however, a difference in the 

 colour of some of the kauri timber, exclusive of the prized " mottled" kind, 

 for which the old Maoris had, as usual, their own proper distinctive names. 



(6.) 

 Of their dark and sombre colours, not black. 



Of natural ones, they distinguished at a distance the heavy dark-green of 

 the clumps or thickets of some trees, such as karaka, viataii, etc., and 

 correctly named them : also, of their dark-coloured, edible fruits, when 

 ripening, high up on their topmost branches, as of the mataii pine 

 ( Podocarpus sjjicata), — so as to save themselves the trouble of a high, 

 dangerous, and always disagreeable chmbing, to examine them. The peculiar 

 black-blue colour of the sky on certain nights, dependent on the state of the 

 atmosphere ; also its colour at various times of the night ; and particularly 

 the two dark pear-shaped spaces in the Milky Way, near Centaurus and the 

 Southern Cross (called Coal-sacks by the early navigators) ; also of the ever- 

 varying storm-clouds, for which they had more than 40 names ; and the dark 

 colour of the sea, in calm weather, over rocky shoals, and in deep holes off 

 the coast ; the slight shades of difference between the colours of their own 

 dark hair ; the difference between the colours of several dark-plumaged birds 

 closely allied, as of various shags and gulls, and also of some forest birds ; 

 the difference between the varyuig blue-black and brown-black colours of the 

 backs of several of the larger sea-fishes and of eels ; and were particularly 

 knowing in the matter of dark-green* coloured " sun-bm'nt " potatoes, some 

 * See note § 3, clause 3, supra ; hence that name. 



