30 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 
that the “Basin” appears to afford none of the inducements 
required for ordinary Maori occupation. ‘There is no eel stream 
handy (at least nearer than the Pass itself) ; there are even no 
cabbage trees. So that, it is contended, unless the Natives 
made use of the place for solemn public gatherings, one does 
not see, in common language, what the deuce they went there 
for. As for shelter from the weather, they could have found 
that in other places in the Pass itself, nearer to eels and other 
congenial food. Upon this theory, then, the paintings them- 
selves would have been the work of Natives in connection with 
some of their public gatherings, or else may have been the 
employment of idle individuals in the intervals of oratory, or 
while waiting for the chiefs to open the business. 
It should be mentioned also that several of our number 
recognised, or thought that they recognised, different “ages” in 
the paintings. Dr. von Haast states in his address (Trans. Vol. 
X., p. 45) that the black designs “are not contemporaneous with 
the red ones” because “ they pass, not only indiscriminately over 
them, but many of them were only painted after the rock had 
already scaled off under the red ones ;” and again, p. 51, he 
says that they pass “indiscriminately over the red ones as well 
as over each other.” It appeared to many of us that the paint- 
ings might be divided into three classes. First, the red designs, 
all seemingly of one type. Secondly, black designs simply out- 
lined. Thirdly, black designs with the whole outline filled up 
with pigment, not shaded, but evenly spread. The theory adopted 
by some of our number was that the red ones were the oldest, or 
to use the phrase adopted, “really archaic”; that the filled-up 
black ones, looking as if daubed on with the thumb, were less 
ancient ; that the black outlines were the most modern of the 
three. Of the intervals between each no opinion was, I think, 
formed. 
Having now, I believe, given a fair exposition of the views of 
our party as a whole, and of individual sections of it, I may be 
allowed, perhaps, to state what is my own opinion upon these 
paintings, and to examine the theories which have been publicly 
put forth concerning them. 
(To be continued.) 
