CoLENSO. — On the Colour Sense of the Maoris. 63 



that distinguished the tree in his sight ; the fruit of this species being 

 very small and concealed, and not at all showy. SiDecimens from that 

 branch I subsequently sent to Sir W. J. Hooker, and they were described 

 by him with a drawing.* 



It always seemed (to me) as if the old Maoris had a peculiar natural 

 inclination, or bias, towards what I have called neutral colours. This, I 

 thought, was shown, — (1.) in their sometimes choosing to line their large 

 public reception houses with the small, light-brown, narrow stalks of the 

 common fern fPteris esculenta), all cut to one length, and placed horizontally 

 and closely, and built up, or interlaced together, in separate panels between 

 the pilasters of the building, with a very great deal of care and trouble : — 

 (2.) again, in their sometimes preferring to line the roofs of their dwelling- 

 houses and A-HWrt?-a- stores {i.e. the first layer of thatch placed upon the 

 white rafters), with the large green fronds of the nikau palm (Areca sapidaj, 

 which were regularly placed on while fresh, and their long narrow pinnate 

 leaflets neatly interlaced ; these, which were green at first, soon became of 

 a uniform dark-brown colour on drying, serving remarkably well to set off 

 to advantage the light-coloured rafters of kauri, or of taiva wood. This 

 manner of roofing, chiefly obtained at the north, among the Ngapuhi tribe, 

 where the totara timber was not so common as at the south : — (3.) in their 

 dingy-looking Ztim-feather cloaks, and in their common, slightly-coloured, 

 (dyed) flaxen ones : — (4.) in the brown parrot, and dark pigeon plumes, used 

 largely for their war-canoes : — (5.) in the women wearing around their necks 

 little satchets composed of the finely-mottled neutral plumage of the whio duck 

 f Hymenolaimus malacorhynchus ) , and of the elegantly flecked, or pencilled, 

 back plumage of the male putangitangi or paradise duck ( Casarca variegata ) : 

 — and (6) in their, sometimes, only lightly dyeing their prepared strips of 

 undressed flax for their fancy baskets, so as to become of a dark dove, or 

 drab, or even a light slate-colour ; and then, in weaving them, to form 

 many kinds of regular chequered patterns, by ingeniously turning sides to 

 the said strips in the weaving ; giving the whole, when finished, somewhat 

 of a damasked, or mosaic, appearance, owing to the difference of the reflec- 

 tion in the hues of the one colour, arising from the more glossy upper skin 

 of the flax-leaf regularly interwoven contrasted with the duller appearance 

 of the under and slightly scraped surface of the same ; hence, too, it was, 

 that the skilled old lady-weavers were always mightily pleased with the 

 in-woven damasked pattern of a common unbleached linen table-cloth : — 

 and, also, (7) in their pleasingly weaving together the undressed leaves of 

 widely different fibrous plants, — as of New Zealand flax (Phormium), of 



* Vide, "London Journal of Botany," Vol. I., p. 301: and, Hooker's " Icones 

 Plantarum," Vol. VI., t. 648. 



