62 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
done at any one time, by no means of any great antiquity, and 
without any particular collective meaning. Maoris, like all 
savages, are only children in many things. A school boy will 
cover a wall with all sorts of scrawls and figures, some large, 
some small, in whatever colours and pigments happen to be at 
his hand. Sometimes one can detect resemblances to natural 
objects, sometimes no likeness can be made out. Sitting the 
other evening in a schoolroom during a public lecture, I found 
the desk before me covered all over with schoolboy work. 
Amongst other devices a huge cow (at least it had four legs and 
two horns) sprawled all over the desk, and just between two of 
the legs was a figure evidently designed for a human being. It 
did not occur to me that the artist had meant the quadruped for 
a gigantic or fabulous monster, merely because it was so much 
larger than the man. I take it that the Maoris of old time 
were, in matters of art, nothing better than the ordinary school- 
boy, and that their daubs on the Weka Pass Rock, done with 
red paint when they had no black, and with black paint when 
they had no red, were simply on a par with the multifarious 
scrawls with which boys naturally decorate any surface handy to 
them. 
I am aware that there is one reply which may be made to 
this, that the “paintings ” are not in the ordinary style of Maori 
art, and that Mr Stack (Transactions Vol. X., p. 55) speaks of 
them as of “far greater antiquity ” than Maori work. But, first, 
even Mr Stack only attributes them to the Ngati mamoe, who, 
as far as I can make out, seem to have lived here no more than 
two or three hundred years ago. Secondly, is it possible to 
compare Dr. von Haast’s figure No.1 (the diving sperm whale) 
or his No. 3, with the figure from South Canterbury given in the 
same plate by Mr Stack, without seeing a very close resemblance 
thereto, except that in one case there is mere outline and in 
the other parallel lines? Thirdly, supposing even great diversity 
of style, that need not entail diversity of race any more than the 
“ oraffiti”” of Pompeii are evidence of a race of artists different 
from those who painted the Villa of Diomed, any more than the 
“artists of the valentines in our shop windows just now need be 
of different race from Mr Millais or Mr Leighton.” 
My paper is already too long, and I need do no more than 
conclude with the expression of my belief that these “paintings” 
are nothing more and nothing less than a set of daubs on the 
rock, the work of ordinary native draughtsmen, scrawled as 
children scrawl on walls or desks, and entirely destitute of any 
symbolic meaning, whether of Buddhistic, Indian, or other exotic 
character. 
P.S.—I find that, in the first portion of my paper, when en- 
deavouring to give an account of the different opinions expressed 
by members of our party on the antiquity of the rock paintings, 
I omitted to mention one which is, I think, of considerable 
importance. I have said that Dr. von Haast, in his address, lays 
a good deal of stress upon the scaling, or weathering of the rock, 
