WEKA PASS ROCK-PAINTINGS. 165 
vein ; cilia whitish, with an obscure dark fuscous apical hook, 
basal % separated by a blackish line and dark smoky grey. 
Hind-wings and cilia fuscous-grey. 
Male, length 5% lines. 
An inconspicuous narrow-winged almost unicolorous species. 
One male taken flying at dusk on a bare grassy hill near Wel- 
lington, in January. 
A FEW REMARKS ON MR. W. M. MASKELL’S 
PAPER, INTITULED, “A VISIT TO WEKA PASS 
ROCK-PAINTINGS.” 
a 
BY JULIUS VON HAAST, PH. D., F.R.S. 
epree gee 09h | 
Mr. Maskell, in Nos. I. and II. of the New Zealand JOURNAL 
OF SCIENCE, has favoured us with his views on the Weka Pass 
Rock-paintings, gathered during a short excursion to that 
locality. I would not have taken any notice of these, evidently 
hasty impressions, had not Mr. Maskell accused me that, instead 
of striving to advance the truth and the knowledge of the former 
inhabitants of these Islands, I had only “endeavoured to make 
these paintings fit in with my preconceptions on the antiquity of 
the native races.”* I must repel this insinuation as totally un- 
deserved and uncalled for. Mr. Maskell thinks it absurd that I 
should have compared some of the peculiar characters with 
Tamil letters, like those on Mr. Colenso’s bronze bell; but he 
does not give sufficient weight to the opinion of the Rev. Mr. 
Pargitter (quoted in my paper), who lived for a long time in 
Ceylon as a missionary, and who testifies as to the similarity of 
these characters to Tamil compound letters.+ 
During a discussion, after some notes of mine on the same 
subject had been read before the Anthropological Institute of 
Great Britain in August, 1878, one of the speakers, Mr. Wal- 
house, testified that there was certainly some faint resemblance. 
with the Chalukuja characters of the rock inscriptions of the 
sixth and seventh centuries, so that my suggestion was, after all, 
not so far-fetched as Mr. Maskell wishes to make it. 
I shall now say a few words about Mr. Cameron, who was 
good enough to give us his views on the rock- -paintings. I have 
nothing whatever to do with his etymological views as to the 
meaning of the Maori words, as I am not competent to judge 
how far that gentleman is right or wrong in his explanations ; 
however, although I must confess that I could not follow his 
conclusions, I still maintain that Mr. Cameron’s views on the 
rock-paintings deserve all the attention I gave them, and, even 
considered as a mere suggestion, are not to be put aside as 
* « New Zealand JOURNAL OF SCIENCE,” page 56. 
t ‘‘ Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, ” page 54. 
