CoLfiNSO. — On the Colour Sense of the Maoris. 61 



ttitu shrub (Coriaria ruscifoUa) to obtain a blue-black, which was some- 

 times used for fancy and ornamental work, — as in weaving graceful little 

 baskets, etc., for a first-born or beloved child, — it had a very pecuHar hue ; 

 and for the purpose of body-tattooing they used various kinds of charcoal, 

 both animal and vegetable, obtained from several peculiar sources, and 

 manufactured in a highly curious manner with much laboiu* and skill. For 

 colouring black their narrow and thin wooden slips, or carefully prepared 

 laths of totara wood, — with which they plentifully ornamented the interior 

 panels on the walls of their chiefs' houses, in order to set off to advantage 

 the white and yellow filagree work interlaced thereon to regular patterns, 

 as well as the hghter yellow reeds beneath, — they passed the laths one by 

 one repeatedly and quickly through a fire, partly charring the outside, until 

 they had made them of the proper hue ; this done the slips were well rubbed 

 and made quite clean and glossy, and fixed in their places. 



(8.) 

 Of their sober neutral colours neither dark nor light. 

 These, composed of various shades and of nearly all colours, they knew 

 well, both naturally and artificially. It was in this particular portion of 

 their discriminating knowledge of the shades of colours, that I early felt the 

 more deeply interested, and often indeed proved their correct descriptions of 

 them, with no small degree of astonishment ; for by it I was not unfrequently 

 led, in my early botanizing, to note down and to obtain some new plants or 

 varieties of plants. Even while writing this, I well recoUect then- state- 

 ments to me (40 years ago and more), concerning certam plants, — as various 

 species of rushes and of sedges, of scented Hepaticce, of river Conferva'., and 

 of sea-weeds, and particularly of a Chara, and of a curiously-coloured 

 species of Conferva (possessing a steel-blue cast of colour), which I was led 

 to seek in out-of-the-way holes, through casually hearing from an old woman 

 of their different shades of colour. Hence, too, they discriminated betAveen 

 the different sorts of kumara, and of taro, when the plants were young and 

 growing, by the hue of their leaves (and also of the various kinds of potatoe), 

 and that when travelling along by the plantations, outside of the fence. Also, 

 the varieties of New Zealand flax [Phormitmi), more than fifty in number, 

 were detected by the hue of their leaves, — all being alike green, yet all 

 slightly differing in the shade of that colour, and only three or four of them 

 (at most) in the shape and size of their leaves. I have sometimes been 

 amused, when travelling, in hearing the descriptive remarks (among others) 

 which would arise ft'om my party, on the baskets of cooked potatoes being 

 placed before them, kindly yet hurriedly boiled on thek arrival at a village. 

 On the top of each basket, according to custom, was placed a handful of 

 boiled greens (of sow-thistle tops, or of wild cabbage-sprouts), of such as 



