478 Transactions. — Miscellaneous, 



aye, thousands of Maori words that are not to be found in the works he 

 mentions ; and it was my certain knowledge of this fact which led me to 

 undertake the heavy work of the Polynesian (or New Zealand) Lexicon,* 

 which knowledge was also both increased and confirmed in me as the years 

 of labour therein rolled on. 



(2.) That the translation of the Bible into Maori was not the work of 

 Archdeacon Maunsell. The New Testament was translated and in use 

 before Archdeacon Maunsell arrived in New Zealand ; so were the Book of 

 Psalms, and other Books and parts of Books of the Old Testament; the 

 original translation of the New Testament being mainly the work of the 

 late Dr. Williams, the first Bishop of Waiapu. That Dr. Maunsell largely 

 aided (under Bishop Selwyn) the zealous hard-working band of coadjutors 

 concerned in the present edition is correct. 



(3.) Then, most astonishing of all, Mr. Stack goes on to quote even 

 Greek ivords from the Septuagint, to meet certain Maori words used in the 

 present translation of the Old Testament ! 



In the conclusion of his paper, Mr. Stack winds up with saying, — " In 

 common with the colour-blind the Maori confounded the lighter tints of 

 several different colours, — and were blind to blue.'' 



In my paper (supra) I have shown the contrary of these assertions ; and 

 I bring this sentence forward here (re the blue) just to meet one of Mr. 

 Stack's chief and earliest Septuagint quotations. He gives us, vaKLvQov — 

 blue (Exodus xxv., 4). 



(1.) Is he aware that this Greek word means other dark colom-s equally 

 with blue ? 



"By Homer, Odysseus' hair is likened to the hyacinth (vaKivOoe), and 

 the ancient Greek commentators, to whom the conception was not yet so 

 foreign as to us, quite correctly refer the simile to the black colour (^t'Xae). 

 Pindar speaks in the same sense of violet locks. With Homer, also, the 

 word KvavoQ (our cyan) is the deepest black. The mourning garment of 

 Thetis he calls Kvaveov, and at the same time 'black as no other garment.' 

 The same colour-term is applied to the storm-cloud, and the black cloud of 

 death, and several times by adding /xtXac it is distinctly explained as black." 

 — Gieger, Frankfort Lectures, 1867). 



(2.) Would Mr. Stack be surprised to hear that perhaps the Hebrew 

 word in that place {tepaylet) does not, or may not, mean blue? This is 

 what some of the old. and learned doctors have said about it in their trans- 



* I have often — aye, almost constantly — lamented, that the Grovernment did not 

 carry on this work : had such been done, neither Mr. Stack nor myself had written our 

 papers. 



