488 MAORI ABORIGINAL MANUFACTURES. 
dered one of the finest and most intelligent of aboriginal races. Their 
interesting and physical powers have from the time of Cook downwards 
enlisted the admiration of travellers, and the respect of the Colonists. 
Compared with the native inhabitants of Australia, and of many of the 
uncivilised islands in the South Pacific, the Maoris stand out as their 
superiors in every respect. Their extreme aptitude has enabled them to 
adopt easily many of the habits and customs of European civilisation, 
and to throw off a great deal of the barbarism of their forefathers. 
When it is borne in mind that a great proportion of the Maori popula- 
tion now wear European clothing, eat and drink European food and 
liquor, use European tools and utensils, plough their lands with iron 
ploughs, and thresh and grind their corn by machinery, own and navi- 
gate vessels built and rigged in the European fashion, and fight with 
European rifles and gunpowder — when these things are remembered, it 
becomes increasingly interesting to study the rude tools, weapons, cloth- 
ing, and other articles which they employed or manufactured in byegone 
days. Excepting in a few special articles, the traditionary manufactures 
and weapons have become almost obsolete amongst the Maoris, and it 
is acknowledged by themselves, that some of their formerly most 
cherished arts are being rapidly forgotten. If at any future time the 
native inhabitants should become amalgamated with the Europeans — 
if a century hence there remains a civilised and cultivated remnant of 
the Maori race — the relics of the past and the memorials of the rude 
but ingenious skill of their ancestors will become to them invaluable 
records. The arts and manufactures of a people are the most valuable 
records of its history. What important ethnological facts have been 
ascertained and established by means of bits of broken pottery or rusted 
metal ! The history of the Maori race is still unwritten, bat in their 
habits, language, weapons, tools and manufactures, we trace their 
affinity to other races, and are enabled at any rate to build up reason- 
able conclusions as to their origin. For many reasons it is desirable 
that collections of aboriginal implements and productions should be 
preserved. They are not only interesting, but instructive, and it was 
with this view that objects of this character were afforded a place in the 
recent New Zealand Exhibition, and they constituted by no means its 
least attractive feature. 
In reporting on the numerous objects in this class, it is perhaps the 
most desirable plan to divide them into two classes — viz. : Articles of 
Use, the manufacture of which is partially or wholly preserved at the 
present day ; and Articles of Ornament, Weapons, and miscellaneous 
objects. 
Articles of use — All savage nations in some way or other make a 
convenient use of natural productions of the country in which they live. 
But there are great differences in this respect ; there are degrees of 
barbarism as there are degrees of civilisation. Some races are endowed 
