manufactured, and the flax-bush supplied the staple of their clothing material. With a wooden spade the Maori tilled the ground, dug his fern-root, excavated the rua, or places in which his winter supplies of food were stored, and the parepare and maioro, or fortifications, of his pa. With fragments of stone of various kinds, ground down with infinite labour to a cutting-edge, he made axes and adzes, lashing them with flax to wooden handles; he felled the tree, hollowed and shaped it to form his waka taua, or war-canoe, 70ft. or 80ft. long; dubbed down slabs of equal length to form the rauawa, or bulwarks; shaped and fitted the haumi; and made paddles to propel his man-of-war through the water. With smaller tools made of the same materials, and a bit of shell or bone, or a flint, or flake struck off a block of obsidian, he carved the figures and scroll-work of the ornamental prow and sternpost. With the same tools he hewed out and dressed down slabs to form the poutokomanawa, or pillar-support, of the ridgepole of his house, and all the other timbers required in its construction—the tauhu and papa, the maihi and matapihi, with their elaborate carving and ornamentation. Some of these houses were very skilfully constructed, and finished in a style which surprises those who have seen good specimens of them. A minute description of a house built and finished in old Maori style for Mr. Colenso in 1844 is to be found at page 50, vol. xiv., “Transactions of the New Zealand Institute.”

According to tradition, the ancestors of the Maori came over to this Island some eighteen or twenty generations ago. They came from a place or places referred to in their traditions as Hawaiki. They came in several canoes—the names of which are preserved—in separate and independent parties, at different times, arriving and landing at different places. The accounts of these migratory expeditions vary greatly, but, so far as I am acquainted with them, they contain little to aid us in an endeavour to identify or connect the people who came in these canoes, in respect of their implements, weapons, arts, or manufactures, with existing races in other parts of the world, or to trace them with anything like certainty to their original home. The generally-accepted theory is, I believe, that the New-Zealanders are a mixed race, combining the physical characteristics of the Asiatic and African types of mankind.

Taking into consideration the fact that these people, without any precise standard of measure, with such utterly inadequate appliances as they possessed or could procure, were able to achieve the results which are to be seen in many specimens of their handicraft, we cannot, I think, withhold our admiration. The carvings and sculptures with which they decorated their canoes, houses, and patakas, the palisades and

waharoas of their pas, &c., though grotesque and certainly not true to nature as representations of the objects we suppose to have been intended to be represented, are yet not lacking in boldness of conception, breadth of design, and a certain artistic finish, which together evidence genius in the artist and consummate skill in the artificer. The canoes themselves, the houses, the pas, and the fortifications, of which now the traces only are to be seen, cause a feeling of wonder which will not be diminished when we inquire more particularly what were the instruments and appliances at the command of the men who formed and elaborated these things.

Most of the carvings we now see were not executed with the old tools, and are not, therefore, specimens of the art and skill of the old tohunga, but they are mainly copied from the older carvings, and though executed with better tools are not superior to them as works of art.

Entering upon my subject, I will first notice what may be called the agricultural implements used by the Maori of the olden time.

The ko was the principal implement used in such agriculture as was known to the Maori. It is composed of a shaft of hard wood, generally manuka or maire, from 7ft. to 9ft. long, flat at the lower end, and brought to an edge at the sides and foot. Five or six inches from the bottom is an attachment, which is movable, called a teka or takahi. The shaft is held with both hands and struck into the ground; and, the left foot being pressed upon the projecting takahi, or spur, it is driven down as far as necessary, and by lowering the shaft the sod is turned. The ko was also used in planting the kumara; also in digging aruhe (fern-root), which in the old time was the principal food, especially in winter, and in time of war, when the people often had to leave their ordinary dwelling-places and betake themselves to their fortified pa. Maori cultivations in those days were not so extensive as they became after the introduction of the potato. The maara kumara and the taro plantations occupied less space than was required when the potato came into general cultivation and extensive bush-clearings or waerenga were made. Before that time, the kumara, taro, and hue, or gourd, were almost the only plants cultivated for food. The kumara was brought to New Zealand by most of the original canoes. The taro is said to have been brought in the Mataatua canoe, by Ruaauru. The ancestors of the Ngatiawa of the Bay of Plenty came in this canoe, and it is in their country that the taro is most extensively grown at the present time. I believe the implement generally used in digging fern-root was shorter and smaller than the exhibit specimens of the ko in our Museum, but similarly shaped.

In a small volume published in 1830—a volume of the “Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” which gives an exceedingly interesting account of the New-Zealanders of that day—an implement, described as “a pole with a crossbar fixed to it, about 3ft. from the ground,” is mentioned as being used by the Maoris for digging. This, no doubt, was the ko. The spade and plough of the pakeha have entirely superseded the ko and the kaheru, which was an implement used by the Maori for such work as would now be done with the hoe, shovel, and rake. It was made of hardwood also, as indeed were all Maori implements used in tilling the ground. It was, I believe, used for loosening and levelling the surface of the ground in preparation for planting, for removing weeds, and for various other purposes. Other implements, as the tihou, the tikoko (a kind of shovel), and an instrument called a tima, used as a hoe, may be included in the list of tools once plied by the Maori farmer; also short wooden instruments, fashioned with more or less care, used for ngaki, or weeding, and hauhake, digging and gathering the kumara crop. These scarcely require special notice.

The Maori is an expert fisherman. His kupenga, or seine, was a very large one, often over 1,000ft. in length. Its material was the leaf of harakeke, or flax-plant, which was split by hand into shreds or strips. These were made up into bundles and hung up to dry, or to partially dry—treatment which made them softer and tougher and more easily handled in the process of netting. The manufacture of the kupenga was a great work, in which the whole community in a kainga, or village, took part, each family making an allotted portion. Strict rules were enforced to secure the orderly prosecution of the work. Restrictions were imposed with respect to eating and to the rules of tapu. The knot is the same as is used in the manufacture of our nets. The takekenga, or mesh, however, was formed over the bunched fingers, and was made closer and stouter in the middle part of the net where the strain is greatest.

The kaharunga and kahararo (upper and lower ropes of the seine) were made of undressed flax, harakeke, also strongly platted with three strands; the pouto, or floats, were made of the whau, and placed at intervals of 18in.; the sinkers were stones. The centre of the net was marked with a larger and ornamental float. Great care was taken of these nets, which, after use, were dried, folded, and laid up in a heap upon a stage. At the end of the season they were thatched, to protect them from the weather, and were thus made to last a long time. Landing-nets (pukoro or rohe) were also used, and several kinds of fishing-baskets, made of netting stretched over a hoop and fastened to a pole.

There is a legend told as to how the art of net-making became known to the Maori people: it was obtained or surprised from the patupaiarehe, or fairies. The legend is to be found at page 178, Sir G. Grey's “Polynesian Mythology” (1858 edition).

“Once upon a time a man of the name of Kahukura wished to pay a visit to Rangiaowhia, a place lying far to the northward, near the country of the tribe called Te Rarawa. Whilst he lived at his own village he was continually haunted by a desire to visit that place. At length he started on his journey and reached Rangiaowhia, and as he was on his road he passed a place where some people had been cleaning mackerel, and he saw the inside of the fish lying all about the sand on the sea-shore. Surprised at this, he looked about at the marks, and said to himself, ‘Oh! this must have been done by some of the people of the district.’ But when he came to look a little more narrowly at the footmarks he saw that the people who had been fishing had made them in the night-time, not that morning nor in that day; and he said to himself, ‘These are no mortals who have been fishing here—spirits must have done this; had they been men some of the reeds and grass which they sat on in their canoe would have been lying about. He felt sure, from several circumstances, that spirits or fairies had been there; and, after observing everything well, he returned to the house where he was stopping. He, however, held fast in his heart what he had seen, as something very striking to tell all his friends in every direction, and as likely to be the means of gaining knowledge which might enable him to find out something new. So that night he returned to the place where he had seen all these things; and just as he reached the spot back had come the fairies too to haul their net for mackerel; and some of them were shouting out, ‘The net here! The net here!’ Then a canoe paddled off to fetch the other one in which the net was laid; and as they dropped the net into the water they began to cry out, ‘Drop the net in the sea at Rangiaowhia, and haul it at Mamaku!’ These words were sung out by the fairies as an encouragement in their work, and from the joy of their hearts at their sport in fishing. As the fairies were dragging the net to the shore Kahukura managed to mix amongst them, and hauled away at the rope. He happened to be a very fair man, so that his skin was almost as white as that of these fairies, and from that cause he was not observed by them. As the net came close in to the shore the fairies began to cheer and shout, ‘Go out into the sea, some of you, in front of the rock, lest the nets should be entangled in Tawatawa-uia-a-Tewetewe-uia!’ for that was the name of a rugged rock standing out from the sandy shore. The main body of the fairies kept hauling at

the net, and Kahukura pulled away in the midst of them. When the first fish reached the shore, thrown up in the ripples driven before the net as they hauled it in, the fairies had not yet remarked Kahukura, for he was almost as fair as they were. It was just at the very first peep of dawn that the fish were all landed, and the fairies ran hastily to pick them up from the sand, and to haul the net up on the beach. They did not act with the fish as men do, dividing them into separate loads for each, but every one took up what fish he liked, and ran a twig through their gills; and as they strung the fish they continued calling out, ‘Make haste, run here, all of you, and finish the work before the sun rises!’ Kahukura kept on stringing his fish with the rest of them. He had only a very short string, and, making a slip-knot at the end of it, when he had covered the string with fish he lifted them up, but he had hardly raised them from the ground when the slip-knot gave way from the weight of the fish, and off they fell. Then some of the fairies ran good-naturedly to help him to string his fish again, and one of them tied the knot at the end of the string for him; but the fairy had hardly gone after knotting it before Kahukura had unfastened it, and again tied a slip-knot at the end. Then he began stringing his fish again, and when he had got a great many on up he lifted them, and off they slipped as before. This trick he repeated several times, and delayed the fairies in their work by getting them to knot his string for him and put his fish on it. At last full daylight broke, so that there was light enough to distinguish a man's face, and the fairies saw that Kahukura was a man. Then they dispersed in confusion, leaving their fish and their net, and abandoning their canoes, which were nothing but stems of flax. In a moment the fairies started for their own abodes. In their hurry, as has just been said, they abandoned their net, which was made of rushes, and off the good people fled as fast as they could go.

“Now was first discovered the stitch for netting a net, for they left theirs with Kahukura, and it became a pattern for him. He thus taught his children to make nets, and by them the Maori race were made acquainted with that art which they have now known from very remote times.”

The Maori had no rope-walk or fibre manufactory. Such taura, or rope, or cordage as he required—for his nets; for lashing on the rau awa (top-sides) to the body of his canoe, and stone implements to their kakau, or wooden handles; for rigging and cable, and for a multitude of other purposes—had to be made by whiri (platting) undressed flax, which was considered stronger than the dressed flax, the gum not having been removed. There were various whiri, or plats—square, round, &c.—all having different names.

The aho hi-ika, or fishing-lines, were made from dressed flax, which was miro (twisted) in the same way as in making the threads for weaving garments.

The matau, or fishhooks, were made from bone (often human bone), from wood, and from shell; and of various patterns, according to the fancy or ingenuity of the maker. They were generally, but not always, barbed. With some, bait was used; others, made of wood, were lined with pearlshell, or fashioned wholly of shell, with a barbed point attached, and shaped to look like a fish when drawn through the water. These are common enough to make minute description unnecessary; many specimens may be seen in our Museum.

The hinakituna, for catching eels, was a basket made of a creeping fern called mangemange. It was generally about 5ft. or 6ft. in length, and 18in. in diameter; cylindrical, but tapering at one end. Both ends were open—one, the larger, having an inverted funnel inserted, through which the eels passed into the basket; the other, fitted with a removable cover, or door, for discharging its contents. These baskets were placed in the pa tuna, or eel-weirs, and in the course of small streams, near their confluence with larger ones. The material of which they were made being very tough and durable, they were almost imperishable; and, as they perfectly answered the purpose for which they were constructed, they were regarded as a most useful and valuable item of personal property.

The tapora is a small net for inanga, the so-called white-bait of the fresh-water lakes and rivers.

The taruke is a basket for taking koura, or crayfish. The rou kakahi is an instrument used to collect the fresh-water bivalve kakahi, found in the lakes and esteemed as a delicacy, and a food suitable for sick persons and children; the liquor obtained from these shellfish (the wai kakahi) making a kind of broth, palatable and nutritious and easy of digestion.

The rou resembles a rake, to which a rori, a net or basket-like receptacle, is attached, into which the shellfish falls as it is raked up from the bottom. The fisherman stands up in his canoe and plies his rou until he has obtained a sufficient quantity. It is hard work, which has given rise to the proverb,—

The husband who gathers kakahi shall be caressed.

The husband who sleeps away his time in the house shall be cuffed.

A specimen of the rou is in the Museum.

Barbed spears were used for spearing flounders and other fish, which were attracted with lighted torches at night.

In snaring birds and kiore (the so-called Maori rat), the Maori was expert. The kiore was taken in a trap, tawhiti

kiore, not very different from a mole-trap. These traps were placed at short intervals along tracks called ara kiore. Birds were noosed with loops of flax, placed in situations to which they were likely to come for water. They were also speared with a long spear (tahere manu, and here) tipped with bone or the sting of the ray. These were made of tawa or other light woods.

In a paper read by Major Heaphy, V.C., before the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1879 (Transactions, vol. xii.), a very good description is given of the tahere, and of the way it was used in spearing pigeons. Major Heaphy says,—

“On another occasion I accompanied a party of natives into the hills near Belmont to spear pigeons. The spears are about 12ft. long, and very slender—not more than ½in. in diameter at the thickest part. They have to be held near the point, and, on a journey, trailed behind until wanted for immediate use. The pigeons are probably feeding in low trees, or are about water-holes, and are scarcely frightened at the approach of the hunter, who quietly steals under them, sometimes even ascending the lower branches of the tree the bird occupies. The spear is then quietly directed amongst the foliage towards the breast of the bird, which takes little notice of the operation. When the point is within half a yard a sudden thrust is made, and the bird is transfixed. The point of the weapon is of bone, and barbed. This bone is hung securely by a lanyard at its base to the spear-head, but when ready for use is lashed with thin thread alongside the wood. The wounded bird flutters with such force as would break the spear were the whole rigid; but, as arranged, the thread breaks, and the bird on the barbed bone falls the length of the lanyard, where its strugglings do not affect the spear, and it is easily taken by the fowler's left hand. This mode of capturing birds very soon after our arrival went out of vogue. The spears were exceedingly difficult to make, and the few that were finished were eagerly bought by the whites as curiosities.”

The Maori proverb inculcating the wisdom of forethought in providing for what may be required on a journey says, “Don't forget provender; there will be no tarainga here (bird-spear making) on the way.”

Weaving, or Whatu.—The implements used by the Maori in the manufacture of the articles used for clothing were very simple. The so-called Maori mat, the beautiful kaitaka, with its rich taniko border at the foot; the korowai, with the pendent glossy black thrums falling in graceful curves over its folds; the handsome bordered korohunga—these Maori curiosities, now so admired and sought after by the tourist, were all manufactured from the fibre of the harakeke, or flax-

plant. The process was called whatu puweru. In texture and workmanship, substance and durability, these fabrics excel the similar productions of the other islands of the Pacific, and were made without the aid of either the spinning-wheel, the shuttle, the loom, or of any apparatus beyond four pegs stuck into the ground to form the four corners of a frame, with a pair, or perhaps two pairs, of skilful hands.

The turupou, or pegs, were about 1ft. or 18in. long, generally ornamentally carved at the top, and placed at proper distances according to the size of the garment to be made. To these were fastened the threads forming the aho (the warp—though called the woof in the dictionaries). With the aho, which was fourfold, were knotted a number of threads of the whenu (the woof) until the intended width of the fabric was attained. The whenu is the woof, as it represents threads carried by the shuttle between the rising and falling threads of the warp in the ordinary process of weaving. The Maori method, differing from ours, is to raise and depress alternately two of the aho threads, at the same time crossing them by bringing the two outer over the two inner ones, which thus become outer ones; this forms a knot, which holds the woof-threads. It will be seen that thus, instead of the shuttle-thread or woof being carried between alternate threads of the warp, the warp itself is manipulated and brought over the shuttle-threads or woof.

By this process were woven a great variety of garments, much pains and care being taken in the preparation of the muka, or flax, more especially that used for the finer garments. It was spun or twisted into thread by the simple process of pressing and rolling between the palm of the hand and the knee two strands of the muka. A twist, tight or loose as required, is thus formed similar to one produced by spinning in the ordinary way. The border, taniko, at the bottom of the kaitaka was not made in the same way as the rest of the garment. The art of making the taniko border, however, if not lost, is, I believe, known to very few of the Maoris themselves at the present day. The kaitaka is peculiarly the garment of a chief, and was worn fastened over the right shoulder. The korowai is more usually worn by females of rank, and was worn wrapped round the body and fastened over the left shoulder, or in front, if fastened at all. Other garments, the foundation of which is flax, are made with strips of dogskin, as the ihupuni or topuni, and the kahuwaero, made from the long hair of the tail of the Maori dog. There were also garments made with feathers of birds, as the kahu kiwi (kiwi feathers); the kahu weka; the kakapo (ground-parrot—greenish feathers). These were incorporated or interwoven in the process of the whatu. There were also coarse gar-

ments for ordinary wear when travelling, or at work, or in wet weather: the pihepihe, the pora or tatara—a very great variety. Specimens of these are to be seen in our Museum, and bear witness to the patience and ingenuity of those employed in their production—generally the feminine part of the Maori community. With reference to the feather mats, however, Polack, in his book, “Manners and Customs of New Zealand,” says, “The clothing of the birds of the shore and ocean are made use of to form a garment, a strong matting being the substance on which the ingenuity of the chiefs is expended in obtaining the aërial garment. In pursuing this occupation among the females the warrior realised no bad idea of the gallant Hercules at the feet of Omphale.”

Floor-mats (takapau), baskets (kete), &c., were made by interlacing strips of flax-leaf, or the leaf of the ti (cabbage-palm). The process of making these is called raranga. Beautiful girdles (maro, or tatua) were also made by the same process from the pingao, a yellow rush growing near the sea. No implement was required for this work—the hand sufficed.

The culinary appliances of the Maori people were very simple; many of them were found ready to hand, requiring but little skill to adapt them to the purposes for which they were used. A pipi shell, or a chip of the mata, or obsidian, served as a knife, and was deftly and effectively handled in all such operations as required a cutting instrument. It is simply wonderful what can be, and is, done with a pipi shell in the hand of an unsophisticated Maori accustomed to its use.

The oumu, or haangi, in which food was cooked, was only a hole scooped in the ground of a size proportioned to that which was to be cooked. A fire of dry wood was kindled in this hole, and upon the burning wood were placed stones not liable to crack with the heat. These soon became red-hot, and, as the fire burned down, fell into the hole. The smoking half-burnt wood was then carefully removed; the hot stones were evenly placed in the hole and covered with green leaves well sprinkled with water, making a clean lining to the oven, upon which the food to be cooked was then laid, piled up and covered with more green leaves; water was then poured over the whole, which, finding its way down to the hot stones, was rapidly converted into steam, while a covering of old flax mats well wetted was spread over the leaves, and the whole quickly and closely covered up with earth to prevent the escape of the steam, which, in a short time, perfectly cooked the contents of the oven, the time required varying according to the mass of food subjected to the process. The haangi was then opened, the coverings carefully removed, and the food placed in fresh baskets made of the leaves of the harakeke (flax) or ti (cab-

bage-palm), and handed round. By this mode the food is steamed, which, excepting broiling or roasting, was the only one known or practised by the Maori. Not having any vessels which would stand the fire, baking could not be attempted, and boiling could only be accomplished by putting hot stones into water in a kumete, or trough hollowed out of a solid block of wood. This method of heating liquids was resorted to occasionally, in exceptional circumstances or emergencies.

The paoi, or wooden pestle for breaking or pounding the roi or aruhe (fern-root), was an instrument in daily use in the Maori kitchen. The preparation of this root for eating consisted in roasting it on the fire and then pounding it with the paoi upon a flat stone. This was generally the work of the female part of the establishment, and took up a good deal of time when the members of the family dining together were numerous.

For general purposes the shells of both the pipi and the kuku, or mussel, were constantly in request. In the preparation of the flax for making garments both these shells were used: the pipi for making the transverse cut across the back of the leaf, and the kuku for stripping, by which the boon, or worthless vegetable matter, was separated and left behind. Again, in the hands of a Maori Adonis, a pair of kuku shells served the purpose of tweezers for the removal of superfluous hair from the face, which, in his case, meant all the hair appearing there, more especially when the face was adorned with a fine specimen of the work of an artist who handled the uhi, or tatooing instrument. The Rev. Mr. Taylor says, in his book, “New Zealand and its Inhabitants,” “To allow the beard to grow was regarded as a sign of old age, and a proof that the bearer had ceased to care for his appearance.” The cultivation of a beard certainly could not consist with the full display of the exquisite moko, and it must therefore be suppressed.

In the hand of a bonâ fide, or professional, mourner at a tangi, or weeping function, a sharp fragment of such a shell judiciously selected and scientifically applied would soon convert the person of the operator into a mass of blood, tears, and other secretions calculated to excite mixed feelings, pity or disgust predominating according to the idiosyncrasy of the spectator. In poetic strain the bereaved or forsaken one calls for the kuku-moe-toka (the rock-sleeping mussel) with which to lacerate the soft skin which had lately known the tender caresses of the departed or beloved one.

A flake chipped off a block of tuhua, or obsidian, also made a very handy and useful cutting instrument, and was applied to a variety of purposes. Among others it was used for the pure, or cutting of hair, which was a far more serious, tedious,

and painful operation as undergone by a Maori gentleman of the olden time than can be easily realised by us. The tohunga, or priest, was the barber; and a number of troublesome religious rites and ceremonies, with much personal inconvenience, were its accompaniments.

In connection with cooking, the mode of procuring fire, the preliminary requisite and sine quâ non of the practice of the culinary art, should be noticed.

The Maori cook had no box of matches, nor even a tinder-box with flint and steel, with which to procure the first requisite for his business. His apparatus comprised two pieces of dry wood, with which, by laborious, long-continued friction, combustion was induced. The instruments are the kaureure or kaurimarima, and the kauahi or kaunoti—the former a pointed stick, which is rubbed forwards and backwards in a groove made in the latter, which is laid on the ground. The kaikomiko and mahoe are the woods preferred for the purpose. The process, as described by Mr. Taylor in his “New Zealand and its Inhabitants,” is “rubbing—or, rather, pushing—a wedge-shaped piece of wood forward and backward along a groove and collecting the charred dust at its extremity until it ignited. It was then placed in a lump of soft flax and waved to and fro, when it burst into flame.” A fuller description of the process, as shown in England by two Maori visitors, is given in a small book, published in 1830—“The New-Zealanders”:—

“A small board of well-dried pine was laid upon the floor, and the younger New-Zealander took in his hand a wedge about nine inches long, and of the same material; then, rubbing with this upon the board, in a direction to that parallel to the grain, he made a groove about a quarter of an inch deep and six or seven inches long. The friction, of course, produced a quantity of what, had it been produced by another means, would have been called sawdust; and this he collected at the end of the groove farthest from that part of the board on which he was kneeling. He then continued his operation, and in a short time the wood began to smoke, the sides of the groove becoming completely charred. On this he stopped, and gathered the tinder over that part of the groove which appeared to be most strongly heated. After a few moments it became manifest that the sawdust or tinder was ignited, and a gentle application of the breath now drew forth a flame, which rose to the height of several inches. This experiment did not always succeed the first time. Whenever it was repeated, whether after failure or success, the operator took a new wedge and formed a new groove; and it was stated that this was absolutely necessary. The process was evidently one of great labour. At the conclusion of it the operator was

streaming with perspiration, and his elder countryman stated that his own strength was unequal to the feat.”

There is a legend which tells about the origin of this mode of procuring fire which is concisely given in a paper by the Rev. J. F. H. Wohlers, read before the Otago Institute, and published in Transactions, vol. vii. The translation will be found at page 12. There are several versions of this legend, which vary considerably, but agree in the main features. I have selected one which has the merit of brevity:—

“In the neighbourhood of that place there dwelt a grand-mother of Maui, of his mother's side, called Mahuika, who was the keeper of the fire. Now, it happened one day that the fire had gone out; and, as the servants were lazy and did not move when told to go to Mahuika to fetch fire, Maui offered to go. When he came to the place the old woman said, ‘What has brought you, a stranger, here? Was it the wind that blows against my skin?’ But when Maui told her that he was her grandson she became very friendly, and willingly gave him a stick of fire—namely, one of her fingers. Maui went away with it; but extinguished it, when out of sight, in the nearest water. Then he went back and asked her for another stick of fire, saying the first had gone out. So she gave him another of her fingers, which he likewise extinguished; and so on, till he had carried away all her fingers and her toes, up to the last little toe. Then the old woman perceived that he was mocking her, and became very angry, by which she raised a great blast to burn him; but Maui quickly transformed himself into an eagle, and swung himself up to the clouds. From thence he sent down rain upon the fire to quench it. Mahuika stirred up her fire to make it burn; Maui poured down large drops of rain upon it to quench it. Mahuika raked together her fire to keep it alive; Maui showered down thick snow upon it to extinguish it. At last, when the old woman saw that she could not keep her fire alive, she cast the rest into trees; in some it stayed, in others not, out of which former it can still be got by rubbing.”

An item in the catalogue of Maori implements which must not be omitted is the uhi, the instrument with which the operation of ta moko, or tattooing, was performed. This was a sharp cutting instrument, or chisel, variously described as formed of bone or shell fixed into a handle of wood shaped like a hoe, with which the lines of the moko were cut into the skin of the face, and other devices upon different parts of the body. Most authorities are in favour of the bone, which is thought to have been that of the toroa (albatross). The uhi was struck with a light mallet of mahoe, the pattern being first traced upon the skin with a black pigment. The operator was a man who cultivated the art, and who, when skilful in its

practice, was handsomely paid for his work. The marks on the face are called moko, and the operation ta moko. As Dr. Shortland tells us in his book, “New Zealand,” it is not intended as a mark to distinguish different tribes, or to denote rank, but only to indicate arrival at man's estate, and a fashionable adornment by which the young men seek to gain the good graces of the young women. It only so far denotes rank as showing that the possessor of a handsome moko must have had the wherewithal to well remunerate the artist. He says: “As a general rule, two fully-marked faces (moko-pu) selected at hazard from different parts of the country would, on comparison, manifest merely some slight dissimilarities attributable to the difference of skill or taste of the artists who had executed the work. The operation is performed with a very small chisel, and, being extremely painful, can only be done bit by bit, according as the patient has courage to endure it.”

The women have usually merely the lines on the lips and a scroll depending from the angles of the mouth.

The process of ta moko is described differently by different authors. The Rev. R. Taylor describes it in “Te Ika a Maui,” at page 320. A somewhat different description of it is given by Rutherford, who, with other white men, his companions, underwent the operation about the year 1825. He thus describes it: “The whole of the natives having then seated themselves on the ground in a ring, we were brought into the middle, and, being stripped of our clothes and laid on our backs, we were each of us held down by five or six men, while two others commenced the operation of tattooing us. Having taken a piece of charcoal, and rubbed it upon a stone with a little water until they had produced a thicket liquid, they then dipped into it an instrument made of bone, having a sharp edge like a chisel, and shaped in the fashion of a garden hoe, and immediately applied it to the skin, striking it twice or thrice with a small piece of wood. This made it cut into the flesh as a knife would have done, and caused a great deal of blood to flow, which they kept wiping off with the side of the hand, in order to see if the impression was sufficiently clear. When it was not, they applied the bone a second time to the same place. They employed, however, various instruments in the course of the operation; one which they sometimes used being made of a shark's tooth, and another having teeth like a saw. They had them also of different sizes to suit the different parts of the work. While I was undergoing this operation, although the pain was most acute, I never either moved or uttered a sound, but my comrades moaned dreadfully. Although the operators were very quick and dexterous I was four hours under their hands, and during the

operation Aimy's eldest daughter several times wiped the blood from my face with some dressed flax. After it was over she led me to the river that I might wash myself (for it made me completely blind), and then conducted me to a great fire. They now returned us all our clothes, with the exception of our shirts, which the women kept for themselves, wearing them, as we observed, with the fronts behind. We were now not only tattooed, but what they called tabooed, the meaning of which is, being made sacred, or forbidden to touch any provisions of any kind with our hands. This state of things lasted for three days, during which time we were fed by the daughters of the chiefs, with the same victuals and out of the same baskets as the chiefs themselves and the persons who had tattooed us. In three days the swelling which had been produced by the operation had greatly subsided, and I began to recover my sight, but it was six weeks before I was completely well.”

The uhi is called in Maori poetry “te uhi matarau,” “the hundred-pointed uhi.” This corresponds with Rutherford's account better than with some others.

The pigment applied to or inserted in the incisions made by the uhi was soot, prepared by burning resin, or resinous wood—generally kauri.

Weapons.—The weapons used by the Maori warrior of olden time were fashioned out of wood, stone, and bone. Those of wood were: The taiaha, maipi, or hani; the pouwhenua, shaped like the preceding without the head, and used as a kind of broadsword; the tao, or tokotoko, a spear, in great variety, long and short; the hoata, a long spear generally carried by the warriors in the front rank during a charge; the wahaika, tewhatewha, or paiaka; with shorter weapons for use at close quarters, such as the kotiate, and others of various shapes and names but coming under the general name of patu; the huata, about which there is some doubt (Tregear gives “a barbed spear” in his dictionary, but I do not know upon what authority).

These were made of the hardest and toughest wood obtainable, most often of manuka. Of these weapons, the taiaha was the favourite; the head of it was carved, and often ornamented with the red feathers of the kaka, or parrot, and the long hair of the Maori dog, waero. The carved head is intended to represent a man's face, the tongue protruding from the mouth or jaws, as in defiance. The mother-of-pearl discs represent eyes. In single combat the taiaha or the tao (spear) was most frequently used. Regular rules of fence with these weapons were observed and taught as an art, proficiency and skill in which gave a warrior great advantage over a less practised or less skilled adversary.

The taiaha was also frequently carried by a Maori chief as a staff, and was oftentimes vigorously flourished by way of emphasizing and adding force to argument or accentuating oratorical flourishes, on great occasions and during warm discussions.

A book published by the New Zealand Government, containing illustrations prepared for the unpublished volumes of White's “Ancient History of the Maori,” has among these some showing the different positions in which certain weapons were held and wielded in single combat. One example is a set-to with a mere pounamu and buckler against a tao, or spear; a second shows two combatants, both armed with the taiaha; and a third where both use the tao, or spear. I cannot vouch for the truthfulness of these representations from my own knowledge, but I presume they were drawn from life and should not be far wrong.

In Maori tales and legends there are many descriptions of encounters of heroes where the taiaha was the weapon chosen to test the prowess of the braves who wielded it. The duel between the famous Tama-te-Kapua and Ruaeo, whose wife the former had carried off from Hawaiki, is graphically described in Sir George Grey's “Polynesian Mythology,” at page 92. It was fought with this weapon:—

“Early in the morning Ruaeo performed incantations, by which he kept all the people in the canoe (the Arawa, which had been hauled up on shore) in a profound sleep, and whilst they still slept from his enchantments the sun rose and mounted high up in the heavens. In the forenoon, Rua (who, with his 140 men, crouched along under the bulwarks) gave the canoe a heavy blow with his club. They all started up. It was almost noon, and, when they looked down over the edge of their canoe, there were the 140 men of Rua, sitting under them, all beautifully dressed with feathers, as if they had been living on the Gannet Island, in the channel of Karewa, where feathers are so abundant. And when the crew of the Arawa heard this, they all rushed upon deck, and saw Rua standing in the midst of his 140 warriors. Then Rua shouted out, as he stood, ‘Come here, Tama-te-Kapua! let us two fight the battle—you and I alone. If you are stronger than I am, well and good, let it be so. If I am stronger than you are, I'll dash you to the earth.’

“Up sprang then the hero, Tama-te-Kapua. He held a carved two-handed sword (taiaha), a sword the handle (head) of which was decked with red feathers. Rua held a similar weapon. Tama first struck a fierce blow at Rua. Rua parried it, and it glanced harmlessly off; then Rua threw away his sword (taiaha) and seized both the arms of Tama-te-Kapua. He held his arms and his sword (taiaha), and

dashed him to the earth. Tama half rose, and was again dashed down; once more he almost rose, and was thrown again. Still Tama fiercely struggled to rise and renew the fight. For the fourth time he almost rose up; then Rua, overcome with rage, took a heap of vermin (this he had prepared for the purpose, to cover Tama with insult and shame), and rubbed them on Tama-te-Kapua's head and ear, and they adhered so fast that Tama tried in vain to get them out. Then Rua said, ‘There, I've beaten you. Now, keep the woman as a payment for the insults I've heaped upon you, and for having been beaten by me.’ But Tama did not hear a word he said; he was almost driven mad with pain and itching, and could do nothing but stand scratching and rubbing his head, whilst Rua departed with his 140 men to seek some other dwelling-place for themselves. If they had turned against Tama and his people, to fight against them, they would have slain them all. These men were giants: Tama-te-Kapua was 9ft. high, Rua was 11ft. high. There have been no men since that time so tall as those heroes.”

Mr. C. O. Davis, in his “Maori Mementos,” gives a story which, epitomized, may be rendered thus in English:—

Tuteamoamo and Waihuka were brothers. The younger, Waihuka, had a very beautiful wife, Hineitekakara. The elder brother was envious, and plotted to destroy the younger and appropriate his beautiful wife. He persuaded Waihuka to go out fishing with him, and managed to leave him in the sea, out of sight of land, to perish. Waihuka, however, after a long struggle, aided by a whale, succeeded in reaching the shore, where he was found by his faithful wife, who had gone to look for his body, supposing him drowned. The reunited pair return to their house unseen by Tuteamoamo, and, by way of preparation for a hostile meeting with his brother, Waihuka essays practice with various weapons. Donning his kahukiwi (kiwi-feather garment), with hair dressed and ornamented with feathers, he seizes his taiaha, and, making passes, appeals to his wife, “Do I handle this well?” She replies, “Very well.” He then lays down the taiaha and takes the meremere, and asks, “Do I look well with this?” His wife replies, “Put that weapon down.” He then takes the kotiate with the same question, to which Hineitekakara replies, “Nay, it is ill with thee.” He tries the huata, the paraoa poto, and all the other patu, repeating his question. His wife answers, “No, thou wilt be beaten.” Waihuka then grasps his taiaha again, and as it strikes the earth the blade quivers, and Hineitekakara exclaims, “Ha, now thou hast it! Handle thy weapon so, and thy brother shall fall before thee.” In the evening Tuteamoamo came and called to his brother's wife, “Hineitekakara! slide back the door!” “Enter, Tuteamoamo!” said

Hineitekakara. As he was about to do so his brother rushed upon him, and in a moment his head was struck off and he lay a corpse.

In Judge Maning's book, “Old New Zealand,” the author tells us of an old warrior who was a great adept in handling the tao, his favourite weapon: “In the hot days of summer, when his blood, I suppose, got a little warm, he would sometimes become talkative, and recount the exploits of his youth. As he warmed to his subject he would seize his spear (tao), and go through all the incidents of some famous combat, repeating every thrust, blow, and parry as they actually occurred, and going through as much exertion as if he was really and truly fighting for his life. He used to go through these pantomimic labours as a duty whenever he had an assemblage of the young men of the tribe around him, to whom, as well as to myself, he was most anxious to communicate that which he considered the most valuable of all knowledge—a correct idea of the uses of the spear, a weapon he really used in a most graceful and scientific manner; but he would ignore the fact that ‘Young New Zealand’ had laid down the weapon for ever, and already matured a new system of warfare adapted to their new weapons, and only listened to his lectures out of respect to himself and not for his science.”

The tao was the weapon most frequently used in the duels, which were often the outcome of a private quarrel, and in the taua, or small armed parties which would visit an individual or settlement to demand and obtain satisfaction for some affront or injury, as, for example, the abduction of a woman, a kanga, or curse, &c. Fierce encounters often took place on such occasions, but were seldom attended with fatalities. Generally both parties used tao (spears). Only flesh-wounds were inflicted, and, as Judge Maning says, “No more blood was drawn than could well be spared.”

In the case of a quarrel between two individuals, a challenge would often be given and accepted in the same terms. “To taua ata!” (“We meet in the morning”) was replied to in the same words—“To taua ata!” (“We meet in the morning”). In the early morning, accordingly, the principals, in appropriate costume, with spears in their hands, would meet and try conclusions with one another in the presence of their relatives and friends, who would attend to see fair play; but it was generally understood that a mortal thrust was not to be given, and a flesh-wound received by either combatant would terminate the affair.

In Rutherford's account of an engagement which he witnessed he says that one of the fugitives of the beaten party, in passing him, threw a short jagged spear, which punctured his thigh and had to be cut out with a shell, leaving a wound

as large as a teacup. This corresponds with what I have been told—that barbed spears were sometimes used.

In a battle fought between the Ngaitahu and the Ngatimamoe, in the Middle Island, an account of which, furnished by the Rev. Mr. Stack, appears in White's “History,” vol. iii., p. 237, the spears used by the Ngatimamoe were pointed with the tarawhaiapu (barbed sting of the ray, or stingaree). This is noted as an unusual practice, and in allusion to the circumstance the battle was spoken of as Te Whai.

The tewhatewha, or paiaka, was used in somewhat similar fashion to the taiaha. The warrior armed with it sought to fell his antagonist by striking him on the head with the back of the blade which forms the upper part of the weapon; if successful, he struck the pointed end into the body of the fallen man. The hawks' feathers attached to the blade were supposed to baffle, distract the attention, or dazzle the eyes of the opponent, and so give the opportunity for delivering the blow. This weapon, however, was less used for offence and defence than as an instrument by which the chief or leader directed the movements of his followers, the blade and feathers causing it to be easily seen.

An anecdote, related by my friend Major Mair, illustrates this: it is as follows: “On the morning of the last day of the fight at Orakau, owing to a temporary panic among the besieged, there arose the ominous cry of ‘Kua horo te pa!’ (‘The fort is taken’). The Waikato at the southern end rushed out, and, to the number of eighty or a hundred, appeared as if by magic in the open space. The bugles sounded the alarm, and, just as suddenly, the soldiers sprang to their feet, and opened a half circle of fire on the Maoris. Then a tall chief stood up, waved his plumed tewhatewha three times, and lo! the Maoris had vanished.”

This use of the paiaka caused it to be called the “rakau rangatira,” or chief's weapon, it being so often seen in the hand of a chief when directing movements of his men, not only in war, but on other occasions. It was often used by the hautu, in the canoe, to mark time for the stroke of the paddles.

In Sir G. Grey's “Polynesian Mythology” there is a description of the killing of a monster named Hotupuku. After the creature was despatched it was opened, and in the stomach was found—besides the bodies of men, women, and children, which had been swallowed whole—what the narrator of the story calls a perfect armoury of weapons—mere-pounamu, kotiate, patuparaoa, maipi, tewhatewha, pouwhenua, tokotoko (tao), paraoa-roa; also a fine collection of ornaments, the enumeration of all which forms a tolerably complete list of such articles. The instruments used in the autopsy also are

given, making a fair list of Maori cutting implements. The miratuatini, there mentioned, is a patu-shaped wooden instrument, with mako (sharks' teeth) set in the outer curved edge. It was, I believe, used in cutting up human bodies at cannibal feasts.

A formidable weapon was the hohoupu, an adze-shaped affair. The blade was of pounamu or other stone, the handle elaborately carved and decked with feathers. It was specially the weapon of a chief, and was used to cleave skulls withal. Polack in his book refers to one of these thus:—

“At a future period many aboriginal curiosities will be discovered by the European colonists in tilling the ground that will give much satisfaction to the antiquary, as the New-Zealanders have been from time immemorial in the habit of burying with their dead the favourite axes and implements of stone that were highly prized by their chiefs while in this existence. The removal of such articles a few years after being once deposited in a sacred place would be accounted the height of impiety and sacrilege, either by a foreigner or native; the former would be subjected to lose every article of property he might possess, the latter to death. This feeling is now fast giving way, but the knowledge of the places where those precious articles have been placed is lost, the priesthood only originally knowing the secret, and they are long since numbered with the dead. In 1835 an influential priest was bribed by us to dispose of an ancient adze, called Toki-pu-tangata by the people; it was extremely ancient, and had been buried in the sandy soil for many years; the place of its interment was only known to the priest, who had noted the spot by the branching of a particular tree called rata. We afterwards discovered that had the circumstance been known of the priest having sold it, probably the infuriated sticklers for sanctity would have sacrificed the seller to their resentment. The adze was formed of a blue granite inserted in a handle of the rata, or red-pine (?) wood, carved agreeably to native taste. This instrument, from disuse, is scarcely to be met with in the country.”—(Polack's “Manners and Customs in New Zealand,” vol. i., p. 71.)

Weapons of stone were much used by the Maori. Several kinds of stone were used, but the one most prized was the pounamu. The weapon made from this stone was called a mere-pounamu, and was perhaps the most valuable article a Maori could possess, more especially in the North, so far from the place whence the stone is obtained. There is some uncertainty as to the period when this stone was discovered or came into use by the Maoris.

There is a legend or myth in which it is spoken of as a treasure owned by a personage named Ngahue, who brought

it to New Zealand, having been driven away from his home—Hawaiki—by a female named Hine-tu-a-hoanga. After much travelling in search of a suitable location for Poutini or Pounamu (his ika, or valued possession) one was found for it on the west coast of the Middle Island, where it remained, and is still found. The legend is given in Sir George Grey's “Polynesian Mythology,” page 82. (The foot-notes on that page require correction: Poutini is the greenstone, or pounamu; Waiapu is obsidian.)

“Now pay attention to the cause of the contention which arose between Poutini and Waiapu, which led them to emigrate to New Zealand. For a long time they both rested in the same place, and Hine-tu-a-hoanga, to whom the stone Waiapu [Mata] belonged, became excessively enraged with Ngahue and with his stone Poutini. At last she drove Ngahue out and forced him to leave the place, and Ngahue departed and went to a strange land, taking his jade-stone [Poutini, or Pounamu]. When Hine-tu-a-hoanga saw that he was departing with his precious stone, she followed after him, and Ngahue arrived at Tuhua with his stone. Hine-tu-a-hoanga also arrived and landed there at the same time with him, and began to drive him away again. Then Ngahue went to seek a place where his jade-stone might remain in peace, and he found, in the sea, this island Aotearoa (the Northern Island of New Zealand), and he thought he would land there.

“Then he thought again, lest he and his enemy should be too close to one another, and should quarrel again, that it would be better for him to go further off with his jade-stone—a very long way off. So he carried it off with him, and they coasted along, and at length arrived at Arahura (on the west coast of the Middle Island), and he made that an everlasting resting-place for his jade-stone; then he broke off a portion of his jade-stone and took it with him and returned, and as he coasted along he at length reached Wairere (believed to be on the east coast of the Northern Island), and he reached Whangaparaoa and Tauranga, and from thence he returned to Hawaiki, and reported that he had discovered a new country which produced the moa and jade-stone in abundance.

“He now manufactured sharp axes from his jade-stone; two axes were made from it—Tutauru and Hau-hau-te-rangi. He manufactured some portions of one piece of it into images for neck-ornaments, and some portions into ear-ornaments. The name of one of these ear-ornaments was Kaukaumatua, which was recently in the possession of Te Heuheu, and was only lost in 1846, when he was killed with so many of his tribe by a landslip. The axe Tutauru was only lately lost.”

The legend goes on to tell how the canoes were made which brought the ancestors of the Maori to this land, giving

their names, &c., and proceeds: “The names of the axes with which they hewed out these canoes were Hau-hau-te-rangi and Tutauru. Tutauru was the axe with which they cut off the head of Uenuku. All these axes were made from the block of greenstone brought back by Ngahue to Hawaiki, which was called ‘The Fish of Ngahue.’”

The signification of the legend is not clear, but it is, I think, symbolical. Hoanga is the name of the sandstone with which the pounamu, or greenstone, is cut, ground down, and polished. Hine-tu-a-hoanga (the Lady of the Sandstone) is the cause of a contest or rivalry between poutini (greenstone) and waiapu or mata (obsidian), which had previously rested quietly together in the same place. Both are used to make cutting instruments, but the pounamu could be ground down or attacked by the hoanga only, and Ngahue endeavours to place it beyond the reach of this enemy, he being the guardian of poutini, as Hine-tu-a-hoanga appears to be of waiapu.

May not this legend rest upon a foundation of truth? The idea is suggested that Ngahue, having discovered the pounamu in New Zealand, and taken a specimen to Hawaiki on his return thither, failed to give those who came here afterwards such directions as were needed to enable them to find its locality; and that their failure to do so, until comparatively recent times, led to the myth of Ngahue having hidden poutini to preserve it from injurious contact with te hoanga.

When the Ngaitahu crossed from the North Island to the Middle Island they were not acquainted with the pounamu. This appears certain from their tradition given in White's “Ancient History of the Maori,” vol. iii., p. 255:—

“It is not till the Ngaitahu conquests reach Horowhenua that we hear anything of Ngatiwairangi, the tribe occupying the West Coast, who, like Ngati-mamoe and Nga-i-tahu, were descendants of Tura, and crossed over to the South Island almost at the same time with them. Hitherto they had been shut off from communication with the East Coast by what were thought to be impassable natural barriers of mountains, till a woman named Raureka discovered a way through them. Wandering from her home, this woman went up the bed of the Hokitika River, and then across what is known as Browning's Pass, and thence down to the East Coast. There, in the neighbourhood of Horowhenua, she found some men engaged in making a canoe, and, taking notice of their tools, remarked how blunt they were. The men asked if she knew of any better. She replied by taking a little packet from her bosom, which she carefully unfolded, and displayed a sharp fragment of greenstone. This was the first the natives there had ever seen; and they were so delighted with the discovery that they sent a party immediately over the ranges to fetch

some, and it subsequently came into general use for tools and weapons, those made of inferior materials being discarded.

“The descendants of Maru-tu-ahu at Hauraki show a heitiki (greenstone ornament) which they say Marutuahu wore when he arrived in New Zealand. It has been handed down from generation to generation, being alternately in possession of his Taranaki and Hauraki descendants. It is quite possible that traffic in greenstone between Ngatiwairangi (of the West Coast, Middle Island) and the North Island tribes bordering on Cook Strait may have been in existence for many years before it became known to Ngaitahu.”

Mr. White says: “There are four sorts of obsidian—tuhua, waiapu, panetao, and kahurangi, each having its appropriate use, as for cutting the skin at tangihanga, for cutting the hair, and for various other uses.”

Judge Maning tells us: “Flint and obsidian knives were always used by the Maoris at the same time that they had the well-polished tools and weapons of stone. The polished tools were used for canoe-building, making paddles, spears, clubs, agricultural instruments, &c., and were exceedingly valuable. The obsidian splinters were not worth the trouble of making into a regular shape. The edge was as keen as a razor, but so brittle that it could not be used for cutting wood to any advantage. These knives were used for cutting flesh, flax, hair, and for surgical operations. The edge soon came off, when another chip would be split off the large lump of obsidian which every family that could afford it would have lying by the house or concealed somewhere near at hand. These blocks were usually brought from the Island of Tuhua by the Ngapuhi, when returning from southern expeditions, and were articles which fetched a considerable price in the way of barter. When I first came to the colony, in many inland villages the obsidian knife was still much used. It was merely a sharp chip, but, when split off artistically, exceedingly sharp.”

In Shortland's “New Zealand” the author thus describes the mere-pounamu, the mode of grinding it, and the drill with which it was bored:—

“This weapon is to the natives as great a treasure as any of the most precious stones are to us. It is thought worthy to be distinguished by a name, as was King Arthur's sword ‘Excalibur,’ and is handed down, an heirloom, from father to son. I will therefore give some description of it, and of the stone from which it was fabricated.

“In the Northern Island it is called a patu-pounamu, or mere-pounamu. A very celebrated one which I saw in the possession of Te Heuheu, at Taupo, was of the form here represented, about 20in. long, the blade about 4in. wide, and three-

fourths of an inch thick in the middle, tapering on either side to a tolerably sharp edge. The stone was of a pale-green colour, mixed with opal, so as to present a wavy appearance, like that of a mackerel sky, translucent at the edge, and not disfigured by a single black speck. This weapon was named Pahikauri, and was obtained from a chief on the East Coast, whom an ancestor of Te Heuheu had killed in battle.

“Specimens of the stone are found, in detached blocks or pebbles, in several mountain-torrents on the west coast of the Middle Island. The places most renowned, near which it is sought, are Arahura and Ohonu, on the north-west coast; Wakatipu, a lake in the interior, one of the sources of the river Mataura; and Piopiotahi, a torrent on the south-west coast…

“In search of this stone the natives of other places have been in the habit of making long voyages, and journeys across the mountain from the East to the West Coast. When procured it is fashioned and polished by rubbing it on flat blocks of sandstone (hoanga). This is a work of so much labour that to finish such a weapon as that above described often requires two generations. Hence one cause of the great value set upon it. Another cause of its value is that the extreme toughness of the stone enables it to bear a fine edge; so that, before the New-Zealanders knew the value of iron, they had a useful substitute for it, from which they made hatchets and chisels.

“By some the strange notion has been entertained that this stone was found in a soft state by the natives, it not being credited that they could have learnt the art of fashioning it otherwise. Mr. Banks and Captain Cook also expressed their wonder by what process this was done, as they found the stone so hard as to resist the force of iron. But sandstone will cut it as readily as it does iron; and holes are drilled through it with the aid of a little fine hard sand and water and a sharp-pointed stick, by a simple process which is described in another place. Stones of different qualities, determined by different shades of colour and transparency, are distinguished from one another by names, and have corresponding values. The best quality is called kahurangi, a word often used, in the same way as we use the word jewel in poetry, to denote a precious object:—

“Whaia e koe ki te iti kahurangi,
Kia tapapa koe: he maunga tiketike
(Seek the Kahurangi—the jewel, the highborn: When you stoop, let it be to a lofty mountain)

are lines which were applied to a woman of rank who had fallen in love with a slave, and were sung to her by her relatives, who disapproved of her unworthy connection. In Phillips's ‘Mineralogy’ this stone is described under the name of

nephrite, and is said to occur in the Hartz, in Corsica, in China, in Egypt, in New Zealand, and in other islands of the Pacific…

“Here [at Waikouaiti] I saw for the first time, on a large scale, the native method of grinding the pounamu, or green-stone, from the rough block into the desired shape. The house belonging to the chief Koroko was like a stonecutter's shop. He and another old man were constantly to be seen there seated by a large slab of sandstone (hoanga), on which they by turns rubbed backwards and forwards a misshapen block of pounamu, while it was kept moist by water, which dropped on it from a wooden vessel. While one rubbed the other smoked. They made, however, so little progress on it during my stay that it seemed probable that it would be left for some one of the next generation to finish the work. It is not, therefore, to be wondered that what has cost so much labour should be regarded as the greatest treasure of the country. Here also I saw the drill with which holes are bored through this stone. It is formed by means of a straight stick, 10in. or 12in. long, and two stones of equal weight, which are fastened about its central point, one on either side, opposite each other, so as to perform the office of the flywheel in machinery, and to exert the required pressure. One end of the stick—or, as we may call it, shaft of the instrument—is applied to the pounamu where the hole is to be bored. Near the other end are tied two strings of moderate length. One of these is wound round the shaft, close to the point of its attachment, and its extremity is held in one hand while the extremity of the other string is held in the other hand. A motion is now given by pulling on the former string, which, as it unwinds, causes the instrument to revolve, and the other string becomes coiled round the shaft. This is then pulled on with a similar result, and so the motion is kept up by alternately pulling on either string. The point of the instrument can thus be made to twirl round, backwards and forwards, as rapidly as the point of a drill moved by a bow, and merely requires to be constantly supplied with a little fine hard sand and water in order to eat its way through the pounamu or other stone, on which steel would make no impression.”

In the vocabulary at the end of his book Dr. Shortland gives the names mania and papa for a “thin lamina of sandstone used for cutting the pounamu. The natives fasten them in frames after the manner of a stonecutter's saw”; and “a hard sandstone, found in thin slabs, used as a saw to cut the pounamu”

In using the mere-pounamu the warrior tries to seize his adversary by the hair with the left hand, and, having his

weapon firmly grasped with the right, and secured by a thong or strap wound tightly round the wrist, he thrusts or drives its sharp end against the temple of his victim. Another mode was to grasp the body of his antagonist and drive the weapon under the ribs with an upward thrust. The direct blow with the long edge was not often given when the combatants faced one another. There have been many famous mere-pounamu, the names of which are probably known almost all over New Zealand. Among these may be mentioned the Ka-ore-ore, owned by the Ngaitahu chief, Tama-i-hara-nui, whose tragic history and fate form one of the most sensational episodes in Maori history; Pahi Kauri, which belonged to Te Heuheu, the great Taupo chief, and was recovered after being buried with its owner under an avalanche of mud which overwhelmed the village where he lived. Te Rau-o-te-huia was another famous pounamu, the possession of which was long the subject of contention between some of the Arawa chiefs. The Piopiotahi is another, owned by the chief Tohi te Ururangi, of the Arawa, who lost his life while leading a party of our allies in the late war. Many others might be named, locally or generally famous.

Other weapons of stone were used by the Maoris—the onewa, a club or patu of grey stone; okewa, one of black igneous stone, shaped liked the mere, but thicker, and made of hard fine-grain stone. There is ground for belief that some of these stone weapons are much older than any of the mere and toki made of pounamu, and date back to a time long anterior to the discovery of the pounamu on the west coast of the Middle Island. In vol. xviii. of the Transactions will be found a very interesting paper by Professor Haast on “The Stone Weapons of the Moriori (Chatham Islanders) and the Maori.” He says,—

“The stone axes and other implements”—of the Chatham Islanders—“were first roughed out by fracturing and chipping with other ones until the approximate shape was obtained. I may here add that the stone implements are made of Lydian stone, aphanite, dioritic and basaltic rocks—for the greater part, doubtless, obtained on the Chatham Islands, though there are some specimens in the Canterbury Museum, received from that locality, of chert and some other material, which appear to have been imported from New Zealand. After the approximate shape had been given to these stone axes the Morioris used grindstones (hoanga). These were made of a coarse sandstone generally found on the sea-coast at various places. They had generally a flat surface, were otherwise somewhat round, and varied in size from 7in. to 12in. on the average. This hoanga was placed flat on the ground, and the implement ground by rubbing it to and fro thereon with water.

Numbers of these hoanga are to be seen at the Islands, easily recognisable by the hollow in the centre, shaped like a saucer—a sign of their frequent use. Mr. Shand observes that he ‘need scarcely remark that the operation was tedious in the extreme’; and one can easily see that such was the case by the examples of ill-ground axes, especially some of the smaller ones with round shoulders (uma) unreduced, like an ill-ground European axe. On the other hand, however, there were a number of really beautifully finished axes. (toki) that must have taken an infinite amount of time and skill to get into such a perfect shape. There are many unfinished axes lying about at the Chathams in the rough state, evidently intended to be ground, but afterwards thrown away. When not using them the owner generally Aid his tokis to avoid their being stolen. Now and again a number so buried are discovered in ploughing or in digging up old places of residence. Mr. Shand observes that he has ‘never seen—in fact, doubts the existence of’—any of the toki-titaha, or large axes used by the Maoris, and common also to New Guinea, used for chopping the top and bottom edges of a cut, the ordinary form being used to cut out the chip by chipping sideways, like an adze. ‘It may be of interest,’ Mr. Shand continues, ‘to state that the mode of making and tying a handle on to the toki or large stone axe was identical with that of the Maoris, of which race the Chatham Islanders evidently formed a part in the original departure from Hawaiki. This is shown also by their traditions, legends, and the causes assigned for their leaving their so-called Hawaiki home.’

“The Morioris also used flint (mata), which they split into thin, irregular, wedge-like shapes, as knives, there being no volcanic glass (tuhua) obtainable in any quantity, although a reef of it is known to exist under water at the south-east corner of the island at Manukau. The micaceous clay-slates or argillaceous schists, with layers of quartz, occurring on the northern coast of the main island, were used for making the patus, and were also employed in the same way as the mata, though their edges cannot be made so sharp as that of the latter. Both are used with or without handles in cutting up grampus, or any other variety of whale, for food, the blubber of which was considered a great relish by the Morioris…

“Besides the large weapons made of nephrite, to which exclusively the Maoris apply the term mere, they also used stone weapons of similar form, manufactured from melaphyre, aphanite, and other fine-grained basic rocks, for which weapons the generic term okewa was used… Concerning the stone implements used by the Maoris and their ancestors, I have already stated that they called all those made of nephrite mere, and the rest okewa. It is evident that the

stone clubs, possessing the same form as the mere, but made of hard black igneous rocks, are of a far more ancient date, though they have been worked with great care, and their form and polish are perfect. They have been found in such positions that there can be no doubt as to their great age. I was therefore much interested in obtaining two Maori stone implements, which are very different in form from those just alluded to, and which in many respects agree far more with the stone weapons of the Morioris than those of the Maoris… Until further specimens of the same material and form are found of these remarkable New Zealand stone weapons it would be premature to speculate upon the affinities between them and the stone weapons of the Morioris; but it seems evident to me that they date back to a time anterior to the discovery of nephrite at the West Coast, and its subsequent use in the manufacture of meres, which must have supplanted the inferior material used till that time.”

Of Maori weapons made of bone the hoeroa is the most worthy of notice. It was made from the rib of the whale. It is one of the ancient weapons, and there is some doubt as to the mode of its use. Some say that it was used as a projectile—thrown at an approaching foe, but recovered by an attached lanyard held in the hand. It was a weapon very highly prized, and exclusively possessed by a chief. Specimens of this weapon are to be seen in our Museum.

Shorter weapons, also made of whale's bone, are the kotiate, the mere, the patuparaoa; but these are, for the most part, merely imitations of the weapons of the same names fashioned out of wood or stone.

It is, I believe, a debatable question whether the Maori used missiles in warfare. At page 66 (Maori) of vol. iii. of White's “Ancient History” there is a plate in which is shown something, called kotaha-kurutai, which has the appearance of a missile to be projected by means of a stick and lanyard which would become detached as the missile is hurled. I have seen a description of such a missile as is there represented and of the mode of using it, but have forgotten where it is to be found. A specimen of the kotaha and pere, or dart, is in our Museum. I have also been told by a Rotorua chief that his father was killed with a totaha, hurled a considerable distance from a pa, situated on an elevation, which he, with his people, were besieging. The missile in this case was described as a blunt instrument. Judge Maning tells us that red-hot stones were sometimes slung into a besieged pa, with the intention of setting the houses on fire. The burning of the Arawa canoe by Raumati is said to have been effected by slinging darts carrying fire across the Maketu River, and setting on fire the thatch which formed its covering.

To revert briefly to the pounamu: It was not only as a material for a weapon that this stone was used and highly prized by the Maori. His most effective tools were fashioned out of it. The axes with which he felled large trees, and the adzes with which he shaped his canoe, dubbed down and dressed the rauawa and the timbers and slabs used in the construction of his house, food-store, palisades, &c. of his fortified pa, were of pounamu, ground, polished, and lashed to wooden handles. They were called toki, and were of various shapes and sizes, adapted to the work on which they were used.

The toki-titaha, used for felling large trees, was fixed by lashing to the end of a stout pole or shaft, with which it was thrust or driven against the tree to be felled. By successive blows two deeply incised rings, a foot or more apart, were carried round the trunk, the scarf between these being wedged out with smaller axes or adzes. The ringing and wedging process was repeated until the centre of the bole was reached and the tree fell. Sometimes a staging was erected around the tree, standing upon which a number of men could work together in this way; the axe-strokes being given simultaneously, to time marked with shout and song, in the same way as in paddling a canoe. Fire was also used as an auxiliary to the work of the axes and adzes. There were toki-tarai, toki-hangai, used for shaping and hollowing the trunk which formed the body of the canoe; toki in endless variety in shape and name. The adzes were lashed to handles, shaped so as to hold the cutting-stone at the proper angle. There were toki-paneke, or panehe, for finer adziing-work, and these diminishing in size down to the purupuru, or whao, a small chisel using in wood-carving. Kapu was a general name for an adze—a handle for which was often formed from a human leg-or arm-bone. Thepounamu was also made into ornaments of various kinds, worn on the person, as the heitiki, a grotesquely-carved representation of the human figure, which was worn suspended from the neck; also ear-ornaments, the kuru, tau, poria and many others. These were regarded as jewels, and many of them were named and famed in tradition, as were also the axes and other pounamu tools: e.g., the toki Tutauru, and Hauhau-te-rangi, which were made from Ngahue's ika, or fragment of greenstone, taken by him to Hawaiki from New Zealand, are said to have been used in the making of the seven canoes named in the legend as those which brought the first emigrants to these Islands. The ear-ornament Kaukaumatua, also made from a portion of the same block, is referred to in the song or lament of Te Iwikau for his brother Te Heuheu, the great Taupo chief, in whose possession that famous jewel was when he met his death, in the manner previously mentioned.

burning questions of the day on war, on religion, or on political reform; but he might well have looked with astonishment at the result of their knowledge of the forces of nature in producing food, making clothes, building houses, and fashioning weapons. Some of these wonders effected by science he no doubt tried to impart to the men of his tribe, but with little success until the arrival, some years later, of the mission party. His new friends arrived in a large ship provided with stores of all kinds. They landed with the importance of men who possessed superior wealth, superior knowledge, and superior goodness. The houses placed at their disposal were soon stored with all manner of goods, sufficient to enrich not only the whole tribe, but, to the imagination of the savage, all the tribes of New Zealand. It was soon found also that the stores belonged to men who knew well how to make use of them. The blacksmith, the builder, the ship-carpenter, the flax-dresser, and the farmer were soon busy each at his own occupation, preaching sermons, so to say, by the wonderful works of their hands, while the missionary was busy mastering the rudiments of the language. With what admiration the natives must have watched a party of these new members of the tribe carrying on their operations in a kauri forest. The trees fall with startling rapidity under the blows of the keen axe; the logs are moved about by levers, slid along a plane, rafted to the saw-pit, and there the crane, with its mighty iron hand, lifts them into position. After the logs are sawn into planks comfortable houses are built; while, at the same time, a large ship rises up before their eyes, that is finally launched into deep water apparently with the blow of a hammer.

All these great works were accomplished in less time than the natives would have been able, without the white man's aid, to fell a tree and trim it that it might be made into a canoe. And still new wonders were every day displayed. The black-smith's forge was soon aglow with the molten iron, and curious articles were fashioned before their eyes. The flax-mill sent forth its hum and the fibre came forth in quantity, very different from the tedious and laborious scraping with a pipi-shell. Strange animal—horses and cows and sheep—were landed and enclosed near the missionary's house. The ploughing and harrowing and sowing went merrily on. New vegetables were grown, and fruit-trees of all kinds were planted-Abundant crops of corn were soon gathered in, which the miller changed into flour and the baker into bread. The Maori who saw all these wonders performed must have been very dull indeed not to recognise that the mythical works ascribed even to their deities were as nothing in comparison with what could be done by this wonderful missionary and his

party. And all this reputation was built up on their practical, scientific knowledge. Their knowledge of the mechanical powers gave them the strength of a giant, with the rapidity of a divinity. Their knowledge of the properties of water enabled them to grind their corn, to conduct the water where they pleased, and even to make it rise from the earth at their own doors. The blacksmith was the metallurgist, and the missionary was the chemist and the doctor.

If some intelligent Maori had asked them, “How is it you are able to perform all these wonderful things?” some of them would no doubt reply, “We have learned how to do many of these things in England, and from books we can learn how to do anything else that we may wish.” This, then, was the clue to knowledge and power; and need any one be surprised that the chiefs were anxious for schools to be established that they and their children might learn how to do all those wonderful works? Poor simple-minded savages! They were soon to find out that schools were not established to teach anything more useful than what was required to become a clerk or a shopman. They were not to encourage self-reliance and self-help, but to inculcate the necessity of the individual being always guided by authority.

Even this instruction, poor as it was, only applied to the middle-class schools at that time in England, for in the primary schools reading, writing, and arithmetic were of little importance compared with the catechism and the geography of Palestine. As for the college education, the highest honours were conferred on those who showed most knowledge of the languages of two nations that were barbarians in comparison with the English. The Maori might be surprised to hear that in this much-bepraised classical learning there was very little of it true, and none at all useful; and that a more helpless person, so far as education is concerned, can scarcely be imagined for the colony than a man who had graduated with the highest honours at a university. The Maori, however, got his heart's desire. Schools were established and ex animations held, but what effect they had on Hongi and his braves is not very clear; but the benefit of the lessons in practical science is praised by no less a person than the renowned Darwin. He writes, “Moreover, native workmanship, taught by missionaries, has effected this change: the lesson of the missionary is the enchanter's wand. The house had been built, the windows framed, the fields ploughed, and even the trees grafted by the New-Zealander. At the mill a New-Zealander was seen powdered white with flour, like his miller brother in England. When I looked at this whole scene I thought it admirable. It was not merely that England was brought vividly before my mind, yet, as the evening drew to a close, the

domestic sounds, the fields of corn, the distant undulating country with its trees, might well have been mistaken for our fatherland; nor was it the triumphant feeling at seeing what Englishmen could effect, but rather the high hopes thus inspired for the future progress of this fine Island.”

And these high hopes are certain to be realised—all that Darwin found sombre and gloomy have during the past sixty years nearly vanished. The dense forests have been removed, and corn-fields, pasture-lands, and orchards have taken their place. Large districts, like the Canterbury Plains, that afforded no food for the natives, have now become the granaries not only of New Zealand but of England. The bare shingle-slopes that the natives seldom approached now feed thousands and thousands of sheep. Metals and minerals hidden deep in the earth are being worked out and employed in the service of man. Every harbour and river-mouth has its rising town, well drained, well built, with public parks and public buildings, while the country in the neighbourhood of the town is but a succession of lovely gardens. It is the knowledge of science, that increases more and more, which acts like an enchanter's wand, and has changed this country, gloomy and unattractive even to the eye of Darwin, into the lovely country that visitors and residents alike agree in calling it. It is to our knowledge of the laws of nature that we look for aid in all troubles, bodily or mental, or municipal or national. We had depression, and depression disappeared, not through prayers in the churches, nor through the eloquence of our representatives, nor through the vigorous policy of the Government, but from the fact that scientific men have shown us how to produce great cold in a chamber, and in this way beef and mutton can be carried fresh and good to the European markets.

Now, it was pointed out above that sixty years ago the school-teaching was not in harmony with the duties of life. Young people while at school, with the exception of learning to read and write and cipher, were trained to have their judgment controlled entirely by that of others; whereas the producers, from the farm-hand to the F.R.S., must depend on his own judgment and on his knowledge of the laws of nature.

What steps, then, we may well ask, have we taken so that the teaching in our schools shall be a fit preparation for the requirements of later life?

In answer to this question, it may be as well to show what we do with the very pick of our boys and girls. In the month of December a bell is rung, to speak metaphorically, that calls to all to “come up and be examined.” This is eagerly responded to by boys and girls of all ages and from all kinds of schools, from the dame school to the university college.

At present, however, we have only to do with those who are competing for the District Junior Scholarships. I need hardly say that very much more importance is attached to their literary than to their scientific attainments.

We may suppose the examination over, and that some practical man, not acquainted with our school-teaching, on being requested to address the successful candidates, speaks as follows: “Boys and girls, you have been awarded the highest distinction for scholarship in the district schools; and there are, as you know, not only honour but also certain emoluments attached to this distinction. The object of this is to give you the power of developing your natural talents so that you may prove a benefit to this young country. You know that all that has been done in developing the wealth and resources of New Zealand is the work of scientific men; try, therefore, by diligent attention to your teachers, and by devotion to your studies, to become worthy successors to these great men who have done so much, and are doing so much, for New Zealand.”

Now, after this exhortation, let us see what we do with these young people—the hope of the country. They are at once put to work on their new course of studies, and Latin is made of primary importance. Let us be under the mark, and say seven hours with a teacher and eight hours per week private study: that is, fifteen hours out of the whole number—say, forty hours per week. The twenty-five hours that remain are for the study of English, French, history, mathematics, and science.

This great devotion to Latin is not the whim of the schoolmaster. The course is laid down by the higher powers for those who wish to give proof of their diligence and ability by the offer of senior scholarships, at which examination four times as many marks are assigned for Latin as for chemistry. The real question, then, for an ambitious and talented candidate is, How can Latin be best learned? The only answer is, Devote plenty of time to it.

After the student succeeds in gaining this scholarship another goal is placed before him—the University Junior Scholarship—where the great subject is Latin. Thus we see that at the lowest computation the study of this much-revered language absorbs at least one-third of secondary school and of college life—say, three years out of nine. Try and imagine what reams and reams of paper are used yearly by each student in writing this language, whilst, if we take into account all the students since an impulse was given to Latin studies, some twenty years ago, the paper used would make a vast pile. If all this Latin-covered paper was made into bricks there would be sufficient to build a tower of Babel that, if

erected in a prominent place, with a suitable inscription, ought to convey an important lesson. Such a structure would show the earnest untiring efforts made by the most talented youth in this colony in order to learn a language that can afford little or no information. Indeed, it is difficult to say what is the actual gain from this study. There is far less information to be gleaned about Italy and its people from the whole range of Latin classics than can be obtained with respect to New Zealand from a shilling almanac. The Roman were ignorant of art and science, and gloried in their ignorance.

Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra,
Credo equidem; vivos ducent de marmore vultus;
Orabunt causas melius; cœlique meatus
Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent;
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento,
Hæ tibi erunt artes.

Stripped of the rich apparel of figurative language, the orders were: “Noble Roman, do not trouble your head about science and art and literature; your business is to take possession of the property of others, and to make the vanquished work for you.” Nor is Virgil the only one who mentions the humble acquirements of the Romans. Lucretius and Cicero are equally plainspoken; so that it is wonderful to see the great prominence given to this subject in the school course, and the astonishing ardour with which the language is studied by the most talented of both sexes.

It is now time to turn to what must be considered the most important part of our education system—I mean, of course, the instruction given in the district schools. In them we require instruction that will prepare the intelligence of the youth to develope the resources of this country, as it is from these schools that come the farmers, miners, workers in metal, in wood, in wool, and in fibres—all alike get their living, and contribute to the welfare of all, by knowing the laws of nature in relation to their several occupations, and acting in accordance with them.

It is, then, rather surprising to find that little, very little, of the study of nature or her laws enters into this school course. There is a little science prescribed for the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Standards, but it is so badly taught that this is what is said by the Inspectors of Schools for Auckland Province: “In our last report we mentioned that we found, when questioning a class in elementary science, that the answers were too often given by a very small portion of the class under examination. We notice but little improvement in this respect. We have again to urge the absolute necessity of teaching this subject experimentally… We recommend those teachers who can conveniently do so to attend the

Saturday science lessons at University College, Auckland, that they may acquire skill in experimental work.” This, I may remark, is not a report of the state of science-teaching in 1832, but in 1892.

The advice given to the teachers is good, but no great hopes can be entertained for those who commence late in life to study science. Like all important studies, early training and a real love of the subject are the essentials to success. Science is not a subject that can be taught without years of practical work. It has a language of its own, copious and definite, the full meaning of which is acquired by experiments. Indeed, to attempt to teach the most elementary scientific book without full practical knowledge must result only in failure.

The Inspectors also refer to the teaching of drawing in no flattering terms; and this is another essential in technical education. It may now be well asked, At what are the children engaged for the eight years they are at school?

For four years they learn reading, spelling, arithmetic, grammar and composition, geography, and drawing, until they reach the Fourth Standard. Then for another four years they learn the same, with the addition of history and science, which has been already dealt with.

The school instruction only fits them for clerks or shop-helps, and yet, in our unreasoning way, the cry is raised that the boys and girls, on leaving school, want to go to the desk, or the counter, or to become teachers.

The Colony of Victoria has now gone in for retrenchment and, as a part of it, dismisses school-teachers. Now, if the schools were preparing the producers for real life, nothing could be more foolish; but it is found that the real product is shoals of clerks and store-helps, which it is thought can be produced more cheaply. A farmer on a large scale who has got into difficulties dismisses stewards, overlookers, clerks, but takes good care to keep his good workmen. He saves in outbuilding, household luxuries, and race-meetings, but he cannot do without his good workmen, or utter ruin would ensue; and teachers would be equally essential to the colony if their instruction increased the number of intelligent producers. We are not left in any doubt how primary education will be carried on in Victoria, for our method that was adopted a few years ago is quite bad enough to imitate.

It would be strange if some ardent admirer of educational retrenchment had not, ere this, thus expounded the manner in which education is so cheaply carried on in this province; “In a school with an attendance, say, of four hundred, there are seven teachers whose wages range from 7s. 6d. to £1 a week; then two at £1 10s. and £2 respectively; while the

head-teacher's salary fluctuates with wet days, measles, whooping-cough, and other visitations, for which he is properly held responsible.”

Of course the number of teachers varies with the attendance, but more than half the number are at a salary of from £20 to £30 per annum. It is certainly very economical to have a standard of forty or fifty pupils taught for 7s. 6d. a week; but where do the discipline and education come in?

There is a certain silence and order preserved, or dismissal results; but what becomes of the mental discipline, which is the great gift a teacher can impart?—that power, I mean, of devoting the entire attention to the subject of study, from which arise order and silence. One thing, however, is certain; that the result of having this work cheaply done is that the pupils who pass the Sixth Standard are now, so far as my experience goes, very inferior in attainments to what they were three years ago. I mean, of course, in those subjects that would fit them to be office-boys and shop-apprentices, for the system seems to have no other object in view. The breach is yearly becoming wider between the school and the realities of life. Our education, whether in higher or lower schools, is subjective to an extreme degree—just of the kind to produce the discontents and riot that characterized the latter days of the Roman Republic, when the belief in words was equally strong. This devotion to the study of mere words appears, like the serpents in the Laocoon group, to poison individuality and to crush objectivity out of existence.

I mentioned what the Auckland Inspectors said of the teaching of science; but all the Inspectors throughout New Zealand have the same report. The Inspectors for Wanganui are especially outspoken. They say, “To call the matter taught in the schools science is a misuse and degradation of the term.”

We must therefore honestly confess that, so far as public education is concerned, the instruction in science has scarcely begun, and that no regular plan has been so far adopted with the desirable object of having the instruction in school in harmony with the requirements of actual life.

There is, however, in my opinion, a simple remedy in our hands not requiring any great change in the present system, and little, if any, additional expense. In fact, there need be no change in the present instruction until the children have passed the Fourth Standard. After this the pupils, instead of continuing to attend the same school, would go to a central school, where the education would be for the most part scientific.

Say that there are five schools, with a total attendance of two thousand. These would supply an average attendance of

will remember, however, that a few years ago the peculiarities of Algol were so disclosed by its spectrum as to enable us not merely to prove the existence of the dark body, but actually to measure it, to weigh it, and to estimate its velocity. It has proved itself to be almost exactly the size of our own sun, and its motion has demonstrated that there must be a still more stupendous dark globe around which Algol is revolving. It would not surprise me were Professor Boys to prove the existence of this globe by his micro-radiometer.

The peculiarities of the motions of Sirius have also shown it to have a dark companion that has not only been weighed, but in powerful telescopes can be actually seen as a feebly luminous body.

The existence of dead suns having been proved, it remained for Nova Auriga to show us the phenomena of the clashing of a pair of such suns. Between the 8th and 10th December, 1891, a star appeared where no trace of a star existed before. No eye saw it for many weeks, but it continued to record its existence automatically by photography. It showed first a considerable increase of light, then a falling-off, then in February it was seen visually. Soon many of the most powerful telescopes in the world were at work, armed with all the resources of our modern methods, and step by step the amazing character of the phenomenon became apparent. The star was double, it had unprecedented velocities, a third body was detected, it expanded into a nebula, it fluctuated in intensity, &c.

But first let me gather together the salient features of impact as described in my papers, and then compare these with the phenomena disclosed by the new star. Were two dead suns to attract each other they would increase their velocities and move in curved paths. If they grazed, their velocities would be many hundred miles per second—five hundred was mentioned as a reasonable mean in the papers. The effects of the collision would only tell on the parts meeting each other, and the impact, instead of extending to the whole body, would affect only a part. This partial impact would produce an intensely heated body that would remain between the two escaping suns, and that would have so little mass that its temperature would cause each molecule to travel in an outward direction until the mass is converted first into a hollow shell of gas (a planetary nebula), and is then finally dissipated entirely into space.

The enormous velocity of the molecules in all directions would cause the spectral lines to broaden into bands with ill-defined edges.

The two impacting suns would be sheared by the impact, would recover their sphericity, and continue to pulsate for

some time; they would spin, and show occasionally their hot and scarred sides. Were they moving in the line of sight they would have their spectral lines displaced—those of the advancing body towards the violet, and of the retreating body towards the red.

The middle body would be made up from the two original bodies, each of which in retreating would entangle highly-heated matter from the other; hence almost all the spectral lines would be identical for the three bodies, and, as the three spectra would overlap, almost all the lines would be triple.

The total light from the planetary nebula would be very feeble, and, if the two wounded suns presented to us their dark sides, the star would nearly disappear, reappearing as the rotation continued.

To put the matter into a few words: A grazing impact generally produces three bodies, a temporary and two variable stars, the temporary star becoming a planetary nebula, and then, as a rule, disappearing; the two variables showing variability for periods ranging from a few years to possibly many centuries, and in about half the cases becoming double stars.

We will now compare this statement of the results of impact, as read in my first papers before the Institute, with the observations on Nova Auriga.

The new star was triple. As the result of his study of eighty-five observers, Alfred Taylor sums up that there was no doubt of that. Professor Vogel gives the velocity of the three bodies as 420, 300, and 23 miles per second respectively. My paper in 1878 showed that when a pair of stars impact the two stars will leave each other, and a third will be produced between them. In 1879 my papers were illustrated by diagrams, one of which showed the three bodies and the character of their motions as already mentioned, the initial velocity being 500 miles per second.

The new star showed remarkable fluctuations of light, and almost absolutely disappeared, so that for several months it was not looked for. It was accidentally rediscovered, and found to be of the tenth magnitude. In my papers I called attention to the fact that the central star would increase in intensity and then slowly and steadily diminish; that the two sheared stars would recover their sphericity, would pulsate, and would also rotate, giving us extraordinary fluctuations of light. If the dark sides of each body were presented to us at once the star would obviously disappear altogether, supposing the central body to have dissipated.

Astronomers incessantly call attention to the fact of the spectrum of all three bodies being identical. Father Sid-greaves is so amazed at this coincidence, and at there being

three bodies, that he suggested a local disturbance as a solution. Obviously this identity of spectra must follow with a grazing impact. Each of the two bodies must entangle a great deal of heated matter from the other, and the middle body is, of course, actually made up of parts of the two originals.

Every element represented in the spectrum had its line or lines in triplicate—one being very broad and having two others superimposed on it. It is evident that a body expanding with incredible velocity in all directions, as I have demonstrated the central body must do, is bound to give broad bands, because of the molecular motion in all directions.

The new star became a planetary nebula. Gregory states in a long article in “Nature” that this is demonstrated in two totally different ways; and Professor Bernard, the discoverer of Jupiter's 5th satellite, says that it had become a planetary nebula of 3secs. of arc, with a tenth-magnitude star in the centre. This observation shows that at this stage the chief light was not from the nebula but from the star. Of course, this is exactly in accordance with the theory of impact, suggesting, as the latter does, a gradual and steady diminution in the intensity of the third body and the occasional reappearance of the struck stars. Professor Bernard also states that the nebula was not there at first. Hence the prediction that a partial impact must produce a hollow shell of gas or planetary nebula is in exact accord with the observation of Nova Auriga. The new star must have been produced by the impact of two very large orbs. Probably the amount sheared off may have been many times as large as our sun; yet it was not likely to have been at all a large fraction of the whole—possibly not large enough to cause the two suns to become orbitally connected into a double star; nor is it even likely to have been large enough to allow the resultant planetary nebula to become permanent; but the data at our disposal are rather conflicting. Taking the average of the best observations, I have calculated that the two impacting bodies were respectively four thousand and eight thousand times the mass of the sun; that the velocity of the smaller body at impact would have been about 4,000 miles per second, and of the larger one about 3,000 miles per second. This would give for the swiftest a velocity of 600 miles per second sixteen days after contact. There seems every reason to suppose that a very large proportion of the luminosity of the two resultant variables will die down within the first year or two. At the same time, there is a large probability that they will be periodically bright enough to show themselves for scores of years. In about ten years their habits will have become regular enough to enable us to predict their ultimate durability.

8. All impacts brought about in this way by deflection will be of a grazing character; consequently, nearly all stellar collisions will be of a grazing character.

9. The average velocity of stars at impact will be hundreds—in many cases thousands—of miles a second. The average proper motion will not appreciably affect the velocity at impact. Thus a proper motion of ten miles will only add one to a colliding velocity of one hundred.

10. A mere graze of the atmosphere of stars obviously will not cause them to coalesce. As a mean result when more than a third of each of two equal bodies collide, coalescence will ensue, but this will depend on the original proper motion. Were nine-tenths of 1830 Groombridge to collide with a similar star the remaining tenth would not be stopped in its course; it would pass on in space, the bulk of the two stars temporarily coalescing.

11. The effect of the collision will be to intensely heat the colliding part.

12. The heating effect of a graze of two stars, of two star-clusters, or two nebulæ, or even of a star plunging through a star-cluster, &c., will not appreciably extend to the parts not colliding. To emphasize this fact such impacts have been called “partial.”

13. Partial impacts generally result in the formation of three bodies; the parts of each whose momentum is destroyed by impact remain behind, and the two cut stars pass on in space.

14. Partial impacts of a third of two equal stars having considerable original proper motion would make the two into three equal bodies; two of them would travel in space in opposite directions, the third would remain at rest between them. If there had been no proper motion the three bodies would coalesce; but if less than a third be cut off each the two bodies become three bodies orbitally connected.

15. The temperature produced by an impact will depend upon the velocity destroyed and upon the chemical constitution. High velocities and heavy molecules both tend to produce high temperature. Consequently the temperature will not depend upon the amount of the graze. Were one-tenth or one-hundredth grazed off the stars, the temperature of the coalesced part would be the same.

16. Although the temperature will be the same, the gravitating-power of the coalesced part will depend upon its mass.

17. Heat is a molecular motion. In a small graze of any given pair of stars the molecules will have the same velocity as in a large graze; but the gravitating force holding the body together will be different. In a large graze the body may be

stable, the velocity not overcoming the attraction. In a small graze the body will expand indefinitely in consequence of its small attractive power, and every particle will have so high a velocity that it will, in general, become an independent wanderer in space.

18. Space will consequently be dusty with free molecules.

19. The mass of gas will obviously expand temporarily into a hollow shell of gas. Herschel tells us this is the condition of planetary nebulæ.

20. A partial impact of stars will consequently generally produce in less than an hour an intensely heated body that will expand enormously without much diminution of heat. It will consequently become very bright indeed. It will then continue to expand until it becomes a planetary nebula. Then it will disappear by dissipating completely into space.

21. The molecules on the far side of the sphere will be retreating from us; those on the near side advancing towards us. The spectrum of such a body will consequently be crossed by broad bright bands, each with a maximum in the centre, and gradually dying imperceptibly away. If this body has any motion in the line of sight, as it probably will have when the two colliding stars are unequal, the line of maximum intensity, although in the centre of the band, will be displaced from its true position.

22. Immediately after the impact the temperatures of different kinds of molecules will be very different from each other. Were the colliding spheres of oxygen they would be sixteen times as hot as if they were similar spheres of hydrogen. The temperature at impact will be proportionate to the atomic weight.

23. In a mixed sphere these inequalities of temperature would quickly equalise themselves. Then when the temperature was uniform the hydrogen would be moving four times as fast as the oxygen. The velocities would vary inversely as the square root of the atomic weights.

24. This difference of velocity will tend to sort the molecules into layers like a lily-bulb, the hydrogen on the outside followed by lithium, &c., in the order of their atomic weights. If there are elements lighter than hydrogen, as spectroscopic observations of the corona suggest, these will, of course, precede hydrogen. In my lectures and papers on this subject I have called this action “selective escape.”

25. Space will be thickly spread with free molecules of the lightest elements. This fact is important as one of the interesting agencies that prevent the theory of dissipation of energy being of cosmic application.

26. A telescopic view of a new planetary nebula produced by a partial impact, if looked at through a prism, should give

a series of discs of diameters diminishing with increase of atomic weight.

27. This fact taken in conjunction with the broadening of the lines into bands will enable us to calculate the distance of such a body.

28. The hydrogen will rob the heavy molecules of their energy; hence in any considerable graze the heavy metals might not expand indefinitely. They would lose their velocity by radiation and work done; they would be attracted back again and form a star. Some planetary nebulæ have such stars.

29. In a partial impact the coalesced part will not have all its motion converted into heat. On the two sides the momentum will not be exactly balanced; the body will consequently tend to spin. It is generic of partial impact that it tends to cause rotation in all the bodies produced, and the rotation is all in the same direction.

30. It is a peculiarity of oxygen that it tends to render its compound with metals less volatile than the metals themselves. Almost all oxides are less volatile than the metals forming them. Consequently when metal and oxygen come together they produce molecules that tend to coalescence. Thus nuclei form in a nebula and it becomes dusty. If the nebula be rotating this dust tends to move in orbits, constantly picking up other dust and molecules. Thus a rotating metallic nebula tends to aggregate, not necessarily into a single body, but into a mass of bodies orbitally connected. If the mass be large it will become a star-cluster; if small, a meteoric swarm.

31. In star-clusters impacts should be frequent. These groups should be photographically watched to notice sudden increase of intensity, and then the pair of impacting stars should be watched for nebula and for variability.

32. Meteoric swarms when near the sun would be distorted, and the constituents would impact with extraordinary frequency; they would become very brilliant, and show as comets. There would be tremendous development of electricity.

33. It is certain that the matter of the tail of a comet does not belong to the comet. It is like the motes in air illuminated by a search-light. The phenomenon of the tail is almost certainly electrical.

34. Such a swarm when near the sun would have its near part drawn in advance of, and its distant part left behind, the general swarm. Its weak attractive power would cause it to divide into a train.

35. The two stars that grazed would have a part cut out of each. This would expose the hot interior. A portion of

each body would also be entangled by the other, further increasing the temperature of the cut part.

36. The star would recover its sphericity chiefly by the molten interior welling up. This by momentum would overfill the space, and there would be a rhythmic tidal action, the molten lake overfilling and then sinking.

37. The retardation of the cut and entangled material would cause these bodies to spin. This would act chiefly on the outer layers. The inside would tend to retain the original rotation of the star.

38. Thus in the sheared stars there are three tendencies struggling with each other—the original rotation, the new rotation, and the tidal action.

39. But the new rotation would be a large component. We have, therefore, a star which rotates and shows us alternately the hot and cool sides. The old rotation and the tidal motion produce other fluctuations of intensity, and also inequalities of the rate of motion.

40. Evidently such a body would be a variable star, and for a time such stars would be in pairs.

41. Such is the case. This duplex character is so striking a phenomenon that the probability of its being the result of chance is one to one hundred sextillions.

42. Conduction, convection, tidal motion, and the contending rotations will tend to bring about equality of temperature. This condition of variability will consequently be a temporary one. The star will ultimately become of uniform luminosity. These are all known peculiarities of variable stars.

43. Convection is due to difference of density. This may result from differences of temperature and from differences of chemical composition. The lake of fire will consist of heavier molecules than the remaining surface, and it will be at a higher temperature. These two will tend to neutralise each other, so that equality of temperature due to convection will not be brought about quickly. It is surprising what a number of agencies there are tending to retain this inequality of temperature. This condition may as an extreme case last thousands of years.

44. The work of cutting the star will be infinitesimal in relation to its available energy, and will not appreciably lessen the velocity of the escaping stars, but the middle body will exercise a powerful attraction. It will exercise a retarding influence preventing the retreat of the two bodies, equal to three times the mass either body loses. Hence when two equal bodies lose a third each they do not become free from the new central body.

45. If the original proper motion were large and the graze small the two stars would escape each other. If the original

motion were small, and the graze on an average more than a tenth, then the two stars would become orbitally connected.

46. Such a pair form a permanent double star. Proctor and other astronomers are of opinion that impacting stars that become orbitally connected could not make double stars, as they would impact again. They overlook the fact that the nebula that retarded their escape will have dissipated before they return, hence the eccentricity will lessen greatly, and, as a rule, instead of impacting again, they will be scores of millions of miles away at perihelion.

47. Double stars should be more often variable than single stars. Struvé has proved that they are hundreds of thousands of times more so than ordinary stars. They should be more frequently coloured. This is also most strikingly the case.

48. They should be associated with nebulæ. Herschel says the association of nebulæ and double stars is truly remarkable.

49. They should be highly eccentric. This is also well known to be the case.

50. A large number of agencies tend to render the orbit less eccentric. These are fully described in my papers of 1880.

51. If stars come into partial impact the tendency to form definite nebulæ other than planetary or cometic seems to be entirely destroyed by the outrush of the high-velocity gas. This is not the case with the impact of nebulæ.

52. Impact may take place between nebulæ, between star - clusters, between meteoric swarms, and, of course, between any two similar or dissimilar celestial bodies. The graze may be large or small; the original bodies may have had a little or great proper motion. Of course, all these peculiarities will tend to vary the results.

53. If two nebulæ come into a slight grazing impact a double nebula will result. This will show a spindle at the centre. As they are parting company they may have temporarily a dumb-bell appearance, but the two sides of the coalesced nebula are moving in opposite directions. A spiral begins to form at the centre, the ends travel on in space, the spiral increases, and ultimately a double spiral results.

54. One or both of the original nebulæ may be entangled in the spiral.

55. If the impact be considerable the two nebulæ do not escape each other, and an annular nebula results. It has gauzelike masses of nebulæ at the poles of the rings, produced by the outrush during the impact.

56. If two universes such as the Magellanic Clouds impact, an annular universe will result. The poles will be covered with nebulous matter, due to the outrush of gas during the millions of years of the impact.

57. Stars will pass through such caps of nebula and will be entrapped, and will attract nebulous matter, and will become nebulous stars, or they may be volatilised altogether and become globular nebulæ.

58. Where globular nebulæ are thick we should expect double, spindle, and spiral nebulæ. These nebulæ are actually found amongst the nebulæ at the polar caps of the Milky Way.

59. Where stars are thick we should expect the result of the impact of stars—such as planetary nebulæ, temporary and variable stars, double stars, and star-clusters. These are all chiefly in the Milky Way.

60. If the universe were formed by such a graze we should expect a greater density of stars where the motion chiefly directed the two original universes. There are two such clustering masses.

61. If the universe were the result of impact there would be much community of motion in adjacent stars. This is a remarkable peculiarity of the stars in the Galactic Ring. Most of these agencies are debated in my paper “On the Origin of the Visible Universe.”

62. Nebulæ would tend to entrap bodies passing through them. These bodies would become orbitally connected, and when the nebula settled down to a sun the bodies would produce a system with planets in all azimuths, in the same way as the comets that our solar system has entrapped are in all azimuths.

63. Were such a body to impact with a similar one, or with a sun, and were the graze considerable, all the planets would be spun roughly into a plane, and the central mass would become a bun-shaped nebula. The agencies that would convert this into a system similar to ours are discussed in my paper “On the Origin of the Solar System,” and in the paper “On Causes tending to lessen the Eccentricity of Planetary Orbits.”

64. It can be shown that if two gaseous suns without original proper motion impact completely, and were the whole of the motion converted into heat and this into expansion, the new sun would have a diameter the sum of the diameters of the original suns. It can also be shown that this condition is one of stable equilibrium.

65. The complete impact of two suns brought together by gravitation does not make a nebula of them, but as soon as the paroxysm of the encounter is over they are of the same temperature as before, and have only increased to the sum of their original diameters.

66. Were there great original proper motion they might become a nebula by complete impact; but were the impact of great energy, then an infinitely diffused cold nebula would

the Earth's surface projected to a plane passing through that centre. The data for the forthcoming occultation of ♀ required are the following:—

•  1. The equatorial horizontal parallax, corrected for the latitude of the place and diminished by that of ♀ (P.)

•  2. The geocentric latitude of the station (l).

•  3. The declination of ♀ (δ).

•  4. The difference of δ of ♀ and ☽ (Δ).

•  5. Time of ♂ in R.A.

•  6. Hour angle of ♀ at that time.

•  7. Moon's semi-diameter (μ).

•  8. Moon's hourly motion E.

•  9. Moon's hourly motion S.

Unless great accuracy be required, the corrections for parallax and latitude need not be made, but the figures taken as they are given in the “Nautical Almanac.” They will be sufficient to tell us when to watch for the phenomena. The corrections being made, great accuracy can be obtained.

P. The corrections for parallax have been calculated for all latitudes, and may be found in books of nautical tables. It is O” at the equator, and increases towards the poles, where it amounts to 12″, or ⅕ of a minute of arc. In the present case P. is 56; the correction is 5″, to which we add that of ♀ =7″, making together 12″ to be subtracted: 56′—12″ = 55′ 48″ = 55·76′. Take then from the diagonal scale in the compasses 55·8 for Earth's radius, and describe a semicircle, to represent the S. half of Earth's disc. The centre ⊕ represents Earth's centre. From ⊕ erect a perpendicular, which is the axis of projection, through which passes the plane of projection (at present perpendicular to the paper). The planet's declination (δ) is 9° 57′ S. We suppose ourselves in the plane of the paper towards the left hand. Our declination being S., the S. pole of the Earth must be turned towards us by the amount of our δ. Mark off the arc of 9° 57′ (10°) towards the left of axis of projection, through this draw the axis of Earth. We next want the parallel of Wellington. Its latitude is = 41° 17′ S., its co-latitude 48° 43′. Adding 6′ for correction, we have 48° 49′ (say, 50°) which set off from the polar axis in the same direction and mark the point l. Set off the same (50°) to the right of polar axis, mark it l¹, and through these points draw the parallel of latitude, whose centre is on the polar axis.

Now, looking from the left, we see these three points l, c, and l¹ projected on the axis of projection. We have, however, only to do with two of them, l and c, l being our place when ♀ is in transit, and c our place at her 6-hour angle.

We next imagine the whole diagram turned a quarter round, so that from being at the left in plane of the paper

we (♀) are brought in front, the points l and c to the axis of projection, the polar axis coincident with that of projection, and we are prepared to plot the path of the station along the plane of projection through a revolution of the Earth, as seen from the planet Venus. If there were no declination (if ♀ was at the equator) all the circles of latitude would appear as straight lines across the Earth's disc; at 90° (the poles) they would appear as concentric circles; between these extremes they appear as ellipses more open as our declination increases; at our declination of 10°, as an ellipse whose semi-major axis equals the radius of the circle of latitude (not being shortened by projection), and whose semi-minor axis equals the distance between l and c on the axis of projection.

We have only to do with one quarter of this ellipse—that from Venus's meridian passage to her 6-hour angle. To draw this quadrant is not a matter of difficulty, as the following will show:—

1. Draw a line across the diagram through c perpendicular to the axis of projection. Measure from c towards the right at quantity equal to radius of circle of latitude. Mark that point 6.

2. With distance c-6 in the compasses and centre c describe the large quadrant from 6 downwards till it meets the axis of projection; and

3. With distance c-l and same centre describe the small quadrant, concentric with the other.

4. Divide both by lines radiating from centre (c) into six equal parts (of 15°) (hours).

5. Through all the five points of division on the small quadrant draw horizontal lines, and through those of the larger one perpendicular lines. The intersection of these lines marks at the same time the curve of the elliptical quadrant, and the points of the hours from 1 to 5. These are the positions of ♀ at her hour angles, as projected.

Next we want the place of the Moon at conjunction, and her path in orbit during her course between ♀ and the Earth.

The difference of declination (Δ =29·75′) must be measured from the same scale as before; and, as it is S., it must be measured upwards from the Earth's centre on the axis of projection. Mark this point; also mark it the time of ♂, which is when the Moon's centre is there. This in ♀ hour-angle time is 2h. 45m.; from this point and time she is moving eastward and southward. We get from the “Nautical Almanac” her motion in both directions, and from these plot her motion in orbit.

1. Her motion E. (R.A.) is given in time for 10m. as 19s. Six of these go to an hour, and 4sec. of time = 1′ of arc. We

From this point the crossing of the bows was very striking, the buildings at Napier being, as it were, behind a blaze of coloured lights, as were also the objects fronting and hiding the Township of Meanee. The sun was now near setting, and further travelling along the road cut off the reflected sun, and ended observation.

Although I had not noticed such a thing before, nor even heard or read of such, I think it cannot be of infrequent occurrence. Given a very calm morning or evening, the sun bright, rain falling in the quarter opposite to the sun, and, lastly, a sheet of still water between the sun and the observer to reflect the rays from the sun—and it must appear.

A slight consideration of the subject will show that the distance of the centres of the two arcs will depend on the height of the sun above the horizon, and the consequent angular distance between the centre of the sun and that of his virtual image, the latter being apparently as much below the horizon as the sun is above it. Near the times of sunrise and sunset they will be very near each other, and more distant as the sun is higher in the heavens. When the sun is above 42° in height the vertex of the true bow will be below the horizon, and the nadir (and consequently the whole) of the false bow above it. The true bow will not be seen at all; the other will form a complete circle (all conditions being supposed favourable) in the heavens.

It is, however, evident that men may have eyes and not use them; hence only the general non-observance of such (shall I say?) common things. I have never heard of such a circular bow being seen, but hope that on some fine showery day in summer I may see it yet.

When, however, we consider that reflection is less perfect in proportion as rays strike the reflecting surface more directly, or at a greater angle, we must not expect in any circular bow from the reflected sun to see anything like the brilliancy of that described when the sun's rays fall very obliquely on the water. This also may be a reason why such phenomena have been hitherto overlooked.

Note.—Since writing the above I have seen Major-General Schaw's paper in the “Transactions,”^* in which a somewhat similar phenomenon is fully explained. As, however, confirmation by actual observation is always valuable, and the present instance differed in some details from that observed by Halley, who does not appear to have noticed the crossing of the ends of the two bows—also in his case there was a secondary bow as well as the two primaries—I think it worth recording. It will be observed that I saw no secondary bow;

stony mountain—alike to summers' suns and winters' frosts in that elevated region—was the undeserved innuendo—ugly joke, or worse—on Mr, Collie.

At the time of my reading that statement I was absent from town on duty in the interior; but, as I had known Mr. Collie pretty well, had often admired his large photographic landscape-views of distant and strange places—only obtained through much toil and difficulty, hardship and danger—and frequently had conversations with him in his studio, even concerning that, his last and unfortunate visit to Tongariro, in which he met with his great loss (for he had sought counsel from me on his return to Napier respecting the Maori raid made upon him, and his consequent injury and damage), I was determined to have justice—fair-play—done him. At such times, a quaint distich from Goethe's “Faust,” where, in the inimitable scene on the Brocken (blasted mountaintop), in the Walpurgis-night, Mephistopheles accosts one of the old witches riding on a sow, saying,—

Honour to whom honour is due;
Here, mother Baubo, is honour to you,—

would continually revolve in my mind, causing me even to repeat it over and over, although forty years had elapsed since I last read it in Goethe's work—(possibly this happened through the association of corresponding ideas—connecting what I had been just reading and what I had heard from Mr. Collie with my own trying experiences in that locality forty-five years back)—and I concluded that Mr. Collie should have due honour done him for his courageous and loving artist-visits to Tongariro. Fox, in those days, and situated as he was—a stranger with limited means and few friends in this (then) small town—it was a very different thing to carry out such a visit over an unknown and trackless country (much less a repeated one, and after receiving maltreatment from resident Maoris, and enduring severe losses) from what it is now in these modern days—with roads, coaches, inns, store-shops, settlers' houses, and horses; the Maoris themselves there residing no longer enemies, but much more civilised and quiet, and en-Joying “piping times of peace.”

And here I should briefly state that I would have written a letter to the editor of that morning paper already mentioned on my return to Napier, but an acquaintaince of Mr. Collie, residing at Waipawa, took the matter briefly up in a communication of his to that same paper, which I was glad to see; and soon after a full, plain, and interesting account of what had really taken place at that time of Maori disturbance at Tongariro, written by Mr.Collie's travelling companion on that occasion (Mr. F. E. Lys), appeared in the columns of the

same paper,^* which, as far as that subject was concerned, seemed to be quite sufficient.

Subsequently, however, on my remembering a few nice botanical specimens collected at Tongariro by Mr.Collie, and given by him to me (some of them—Dracophyllum rubrum, Pimelea stylosa, and Thelymitra nervosa—being novelties, were described by me^† and exhibited here before this society in 1887); and also in looking over my album and noticing therein some of the fine photographic views taken by him of Tongariro and Ruapehu; and, further, on my referring to Mr.Hill's paper, read here before you, containing a full account of his visit to those mountains in 1889^‡ (including copious interesting extracts from the accounts of the early visits made to those mountains by Messrs. Bidwill and Dyson some fifty years before), and finding that Mr. Hill, not knowing of Mr. Collie's visits thither, had made no mention of them, although he had slightly noticed other visits made afterwards, as if these were really the first in succession after those of Messrs. Bidwill and Dyson,—I determined on writing a short paper—a résumé of Mr. Collie's repeated visits to that locality: especially, too, as he had done what no one else has done, either before or since—descended into the crater of Tongariro and spent a night within it.

But before that I take up with Mr.Collie's visits, I think I should also mention a still earlier one, performed by Dr.(now Sir James) Hector, to Tongariro in the year 1867, about ten years before the first visit of Mr.Collie, as this also seems to have been unknown to Mr. Hill.^§

I quote from the published proceedings of the Wellington Philosophical Society: “Dr. Hector gave an account of his own ascent of Tongariro on the 23rd November, 1867, and explained that the active steam-eruptions on the side of the

mountain were due to the percolation from a cold lake on the summit, a sketch of which he exhibited. Dr. Hector then gave a list of plants differing from alpine-plants in the South Island, and exhibited on the screen with the lantern views both Ruapehu and Tongariro.”—(Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xii., p. 423.)

Mr.Collie's first^* visit thither was in May, 1878, and his second in December of that same year (these two dates I obtain from his own paper “On Volcanoes and Geysers in New Zealand,” read by Dr. Hector before the Wellington Philosophical Society in June, 1879); but he was still there in January, 1879, as I gather from a date written by himself on a photographic view of Ngauruhoe. On each of his visits he spent several days on the mountain and in its neighbourhood.

In that short paper of his is his description of the crater, of his descending into it, and of his passing a night within it—all interesting and very plain, short, and terse; perhaps the only fault to be found with it is its extreme brevity. That, however, will enable me the better to quote it verbatim here (seeing such a daring feat is all but unknown), while it serves to contribute an additional item (combined with the still earlier ascent made by Dr. Hector) towards the completion of the longer and more particularly scientific account of the mountain by Mr. Hill.

“Tongariro (Ngauruhoe).—When the writer visited the crater of Tongariro in May of last year (1878) there was a cone on the north-west side of it. This cone was about 120ft. wide at the top, and was closed at the bottom, as if the volcano had not been in action for a considerable time. Upon the writer's climbing the mountain (a feat always attended with difficulty and risk) and descending into the crater in December following, he found that the above cone had completely vanished, and that along the greater part of the north side of the crater another cone, about 500ft. wide at the top, had been violently thrown up. In the interior of this cone, at the bottom, there were two openings opposite each other, out of which sulphurous steam was blown in considerable quantities. The outside of the cone was of loose material, as might be expected from its recent deposition, and was composed of stones, pumice, cinders, and débris of the mountain.

“It is thus evident that this volcano is still active, although at uncertain periods. Over the floor of the crater, and up aloft along the sides, as well as outside the mountain, sulphursteam was issuing in all directions, tinging the orifice with yellow crystals of sulphur. The whole crater of Tongariro might be 1,500ft. wide. The loose burnt sides overhanging the floor are gradually falling down, altering the configuration of the summit of the mountain. Upon the floor of the crater there were several thick patches of hardened snow, and at the north side under the cliffs a large wreath of snow, melting from the heat beneath, formed a singular-looking cavern with a scalloped roof as of white marble. The writer-spent a night inside the crater, and found the air intensely cold till the sun rose high enough in the morning to shine into the crater. Astronomers in scanning the volcanoes of the moon have noticed about the middle of the floor of certain craters a small cone, giving rise to speculation about its cause. Does not Tongariro afford explanation—that, as the volcanic forces exhaust themselves, they give vent to their expiring forces by a small cone?”

And this daring action of Mr. Collie's is capped by another, as I view it—that is, his spending a month or so on the barren and volcanic ever-burning White Island, in the Bay of Plenty, in pursuit of his beloved science. Perhaps some of my hearers have not only heard of that exploit, but may also have seen those photographic views which he took while there, some of them highly suitable for illustrating Doré's Dante's “Inferno,” and that from truly natural scenes. I may mention, for the information of those who may not have heard of it, that when Mr. Collie visited that island in 1877, by a vessel trading between this port and Auckland, it was stipulated that he was to be called for- on her return voyage to Napier; but this could not be done owing to the state of wind and weather—the island also being several miles out of the common course; and so, instead of being there for only a few days, he and his companion (the same young man who subsequently accompanied him to Tongariro, Mr. F. E. Lys) were prisoners for nearly a month. Fortunately they had taken the pre-caution to carry a month's provisions with them from Napier, and also water in kegs, as there was none on the islet save what might be found in shallow holes in the rocks after rain. When they were rescued their stock of water was nearly exhausted, and, although they had fishing-lines and hooks with them, yet, from the depth of water immediately around the island being very great (“out of soundings,” according to the Admiralty survey), they certainly had no prospect of ever catching any fish.

There being no vegetation on the island, except a little

scrub at the high and inaccessible north end, and the whole soil being so largely impregnated with sulphur that on a lighted match being thrown on the ground it caught fire immediately, their time there must have been the very opposite of pleasant. Then, the exposure to the winds and sun was extreme; but the very worst was when the land-winds blew strongly towards them across the flaming sulphur-beds beyond the hot-water lake, covering them with dense clouds of stinking smoke and thick clammy vapour, rendering even breathing difficult, from which there was no escape. The lake, according to survey, contains an area of nearly 16 acres, surrounded on more than three sides by high precipitous cliffs, the two highest peaks being each nearly 900ft. high.^*

In that short paper of Mr. Collie's (only two pages) read before the Wellington Philosophical Society he says a little about the volcano in White Island worthy of being quoted here. He commenced it by saying, “In the pleasant, if sometimes arduous, pursuit of art-photography, the writer camped for weeks close to the main volcanoes and geysers of the colony, enjoying excellent opportunities for search into the origin and working of these marvellous and attractive exhibitions of nature's powers. And, viewing the existence, or it might be termed life, of the earth in its present state for at least thousands of years, the question naturally arose to the wayfarer of to-day amongst these interesting scenes, ‘Whence the activity which still pours forth the boiling waters of Rotomahana, to run glistening down the silica terraces of their own constant formation?—wherein the force that lights the red fires which burn ever in the crater of White Island?—or what the motive-power that still throws up a cone in the crater of Tongariro (Ngauruhoe)?’ The reply from the waters of Rotomahana, from the fires of White Island, and from the cone of Tongariro, was the same—the one word, Sulphur.’” And he closes his paper with remarking,—

“White Island.—It is generally supposed that the vapours arising from White-Island are steam from geysers, whereas sulphurous steam never rises to any height. The main forces of the grand display at the ‘Theatre of Nature’ upon White Island are burning beds of sulphur, which show their red fires at night across the lake, whilst the fumes rise up into the air in volumes, to spread there at a great height, like a balloon, or

flow away in a train over the sea before the breeze.”—(L.c., pp. 418–420.)

Mr. Collie also took several photographic views of those wonderful natural terraces at the boiling springs, Rotorua, in the year 1874, fortunately before the destruction of their marvellously beautiful symmetry by the great local earthquake or eruption in 1886, and his observations thereon are somewhat remarkable, especially his remark made while contemplating them: “On what a slender thread the beauties of that mountain-side hang!”—words since proved too true. And as his whole brief statement thereon is contained in a few lines, I quote them:—

“Rotomahana.—During the writer's stay at the Terraces he was favoured with an exhibition of the subsidence of the waters of Te Tarata into the caverns below; and as the Terraces on that occasion got dry it was noteworthy how brittle the silicious surface became, showing upon what a slender thread the beauties of that mountain-side hang; for, were the flow of the blue waters to stop—as stop it must when the energies of the forces below exhaust themselves—the glory as well as the cause of Rotomahana will disappear.”—(L.c., p. 419.)

Furthermore, on again referring to Mr. Hill's paper I find that he mentions very briefly the strange and peculiar high volcanic plateau lying on the eastern side of those mountains. I quote his words:—

“The portion of the plateau running along the eastern side of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe is known as the Onetapu (sacred sands) or Rangipo (cloudy sky)” (sic) “Desert, and it well deserves either name. Some parts of it are swamp, and exceedingly dangerous, whilst the portion not swamp is made up of moving sands, scoria, cinders, clinkers, and tufas; and, although its traditional history is not reassuring, it is a spot well worth the attention of geologists, for some very curious and rare specimens of volcanic rocks are to be found in places left bare by the ever-moving sands.”—(Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxiv., p. 606.)

Having myself had on two occasions, in 1847 and 1849 (in performance of duty), to cross that desert (then little known), and on the first time suffered much, and having also obtained from that neighbourhood several new and curious plants, I am desirous of telling you somewhat respecting that first journey of mine, which, I think, may prove both new and interesting; and which, if placed on record, will serve to show in days to come how the early traveller occasionally fared.

I shall quote from my journal, prefacing, however, by stating that I was then on my way from Ahuriri (now Napier) towards finding some little-known Maoris, who were said to be

dwelling isolated on the upper banks of the Rangitikei River, near the western flank of the Ruahine Range. I had tried to get to them in 1845, through direct crossing over the range by its eastern side, and, though I had succeeded with some difficulty in gaining the western summits, I was obliged to give it up.

I left Ahuriri on the 9th February, and after a long and weary circuitous kind of march—rendered the more trying from there being no roads, and without a guide, and from our not being able to obtain a supply of Maori food (as potatoes) on the way, it being too early in the season—we arrived at the village of Rotoaira, near Tongariro, on the 18th February; were well received by the Natives, and there we stayed that night.

As this was the last southern village of the Taupo country I endeavoured to get a guide hence to the Patea district, and only after great difficulty succeeded, as the country over which our course lay was rugged and difficult, and there was no regular track hence to the Patea villages; only once a year—or in two or even three years—did a small party of Maoris visit Taupo from Patea; rarely if ever did any go from Taupo to Patea.

Nothing is more surprising to me among the many and great changes which have been effected in this country during the last fifty or fifty-five years than this of common fearless communication between the Maori villages and tribes, which formerly did not exist—not even between what are now considered (even by the natives themselves) as neighbouring villages. I could not, however, help fearing that, just as on former occasions so now, our “guide” would prove to be of little real service.

“19th.—We rose early and crossed the head of one of the main branches of the Waikato River (which is the outlet of Rotoaira Lake) at 5·30. Winding round the immediate base of Tongariro Mountain, over undulating ground, we halted at 7·30 to breakfast by the side of a mountain-stream of very cold and pure water, which ran bounding and sparkling in the sun among the rocks. Breakfast over we recommenced our journey, and travelled steadily on. During the former part of this day I met with several botanical novelties—e.g., a very handsome full-flowered Cyathodes (C. colensoi, Hook.), a low bushy shrub of depressed growth, some plants bearing white and some red berries in profusion: this will become a garden flower. The abnormal prostrate species of pines (Dacrydium laxifolium and Podocarpus nivalis) were also here, in many places completely matting the surface; also, two or three species (or varieties) of Gaultheria—one, in particular, bearing plenty of good edible fruit. Another was very curious, and in-

terested me much; it was plentiful, and grew prostrate, having a racemose inflorescence and baccate calyx, which gave it a singular appearance, as if double-fruited: this is, I think, var. ∊ of Sir J. Hooker's G. rupestris. A distinct species of Epacris (E. alpina) was also here, but, unfortunately, it was not fully in flower. In damp spots (but only in two places) two curious species of Drosera were found—D. binata (remarkably fine), and the much rarer one, D. arcturi, a plant of the Australian and Tasmanian mountains—the only time I ever met with this latter species; together with a rather scarce orchideous plant, Prasophyllum nudum; and in the thickets adjoining, by the sides of the mountain-streams, Phyllocladus alpinus and several species (or varieties) of Aristotelia with small leaves were noticed. A peculiar-looking small restiaceous plant, a species of Calorophus, was also obtained here in a boggy spot. I had found a similar plant several years before in bogs at Whangarei, and near Cape Maria Van Diemen, but in each locality only a little of it. Of the cyperaceous order, I collected two species of Schænus (S. concinna and S. parviflorus), Carpha alpina, Isolepis aucklandica, and also several species of Carex, among them being a British species, C. stellulata. In dry gravelly spots I also detected Asperula perpusilla (which I had last year discovered in similar situations at the base of Tararua Mountain-range, in Palliser Bay), and the moss-like tufted Raoulia australis was not infrequent. Many beautiful plants of the lichen order I also met with. Prominent among them were several species of Cladonia, particularly CC. capitellata, aggregata, retipora, and cornucopioides, this last strongly reminding me of the pretty (never-to-be-forgotten) British species C. bellidioides, which at first I supposed it to be, from its bright vermilion-red globular tubercles springing from the edges of its tiny cups. C. retipora, often found in large tufts in undisturbed spots, is one of the most elegant of lichens; its regular reticulated open structure is wonderful. A few curious fungi new to me I also obtained; and in a still-water bend in a streamlet I came upon a large mass of that peculiar fresh-water alga, Batrachospermum moniliforme—the only place I ever found it in New Zealand.

“At 3 p.m. we crossed the sandy desert called Te Onetapu—a most desolate and weird-looking spot, about two miles wide where we crossed it—a fit place for Macbeth's witches, or Faustus's Brocken scene. About it, too, the old Maoris have many peculiar stories and superstitious fears, some of which I have no doubt are agglutinated around a nucleus of reality. Here and there burnt logs lay, scattered and embedded in the volcanic sand, as if where a fiery eruption from the neighbouring volcano had issued forth in times long past upon the then living forest. I noticed also that much of these anciently-

charred logs and pieces wore a highly-polished and semiglazed appearance, as if occasioned by the ever-drifting sharp sand. I was so struck with the peculiar exterior of some of; the half-burnt timber, apparently so aged—or of old time—and yet retaining all its vessels and ducts, that I collected a few specimens, and subsequently sent them to England for high microscopical examination. On the edges of this lonely barren desert a lovely Gentiana flourished in all its undisturbed beauty—probably G. pleurogynoides (another fine garden-flower); also Celmisia spectabilis, most luxuriant in gloriouslyfine tufts or tussocks; and with it grew a much smaller and different-looking species of Celmisia (C. glandulosa), for the first time here found, and both species tolerably plentiful. Several times during this day were those exquisitely pathetic words of the poet Gray, so highly suitable to the place and scene, feelingly uttered by me:—

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Very curious also was the formation, or, more correctly speaking, the state in which the old land was left in many spots on the west side of this desert. Table-topped mounds, from 6ft. to 10ft. high, having perpendicular cliffy sides, each containing only a few perches of land, and rising like little islets separated from each other by the barren white sandy arms of the desert, were common. These mounds, or islets, abounded in a peculiar vegetation, which I greatly wished to know more of; but, alas! I was sadly pressed for time, and I was already more than prudently overloaded for the unknown mountain-journey before me. It was difficult, too, to climb up on them, although I did manage to get on two. Here I obtained an elegant dwarf Dacrydium (a “pine” tree, allied to the large Rimu = D. cupressinum), rooting up a few old trees of 1ft. or 18in. high, in full fruit, for specimens—reminding me of the quaint yet symmetrical little trees so greatly prized by the Chinese for their gardens. Rain overtook us shortly after our crossing the desert, which we were sorry for, but there was no help for it, there being no kind of shelter nor water at hand; so we travelled on in the pelting rain, which was from the south and in our faces, getting wet, weary, and dispirited, eagerly looking out for a fit halting-place, but finding none. To make matters worse, our guide more than once told us he was “all at sea” as to the proper course, because the thick rain hid the hills on all sides (and everything else) from his view, so that he could not see the landmarks. We kept on, on, on, however, till 7 p.m. (dark), when, finding water, we were obliged to halt in a narrow deep gully by the side of a Fagus wood, where everything around for miles of fern and

scrub had been very lately burnt off. We had been travelling through this “black country” for more than an hour, in hopes of seeing its end, but in vain. Here, where we were, we could not find a level spot on which to put up our tent, so, in the darkness and the rain, we were obliged to dig away with our axes on the steep side of the hill before we could set it up. That night was a terrible one of wind and rain, insomuch that we expected every moment to be smothered in our half-pitched tent. Few of us slept that night.

“20th.—Our most wretched night was followed by a dirty, lowering morning, with furious wind and heavy rain: it was also bitterly cold. We were here caught in a southerly gale in one of the worst spots possible in the whole North Island of New Zealand, and we could not help ourselves. To retrace our steps and go back to Taupo (over Te Onetapu Desert) our guide flatly refused, and my natives joined him, he saying that high open desert-sand was now covered with snow, and that from the falling snow and sleet he could not tell the course—which, perhaps, was really the case. From him we had the story of seventy men having been once lost at one time in attempting to cross that place in snowy weather. Murmurs, loud and deep, throughout this long and dreary day reached my ears,—of my having been the means of bringing on this weather through my uprooting some small trees (Dacrydiums), and my crossing the “sacred” desert without first observing certain superstitious ceremonies, and my sacrilegiously eating some Gaultheria berries while crossing it, which the guide had detected, &c. The worst to me was—(1) That I could not get anything whatever to lay on the wet mud floor of my tent (nor fern, nor grass, nor leafy shrubs were there to be found; all had been destroyed by fire, the very lower branches of the Fagus trees in the wood before us having been scorched); (2) that we had scarcely anything to eat; (3) that my specimens were becoming spoiled, which caused me to fret pretty considerably; and (4) that, at the rate it was then raining, when the gale should abate the rivers we should have to cross would be unfordable for some days. As the day began, so it closed—no change whatever in the weather, save that even about us, at our considerably lower altitude, the rain was changed to sleet and snow.

“I shudder now, while writing this, in thinking of that wretched time, though more than forty-six years have since passed.

“Often enough did those highly-suitable words of my favourite old poet, Ossian, cross my memory: ‘It is night; I am alone, forlorn on the hill of storms. The wind is heard on the mountains; the torrent pours down the rocks. No hut

receives me from the rain; forlorn on the hill of winds'—(‘Songs of Selma’)—their suitability being so much the more increased through the superstitious talk and fears of some of my natives, who insisted on it that the sounds they heard between the fitful ravings of the blast among the trees were not merely those of the trees creaking, and of the denizens of the forest—parrots, owls, and wood-hens—but of the justly irate patupaiarehe (wood-nymphs or fairies), or of the ghosts of the dead—just, indeed, as Ossian has it; and Schiller laments in ‘Wallenstein,’—

“Alas! the old fabled existences are no more;
The fascinating race has emigrated.^*

“21st (Sunday).—Another wet and uncomfortable day. The wind, however, had lessened a little, and we could manage to make up a fire, which we could not do yesterday. Not really knowing how far we were from help, I could only allow two teacups of rice for all my natives (six in number) for breakfast, and two also for dinner; and for supper one cup of rice was all that could be spared, which, with a few scraps of bacon fat and a little salt, made a mess of pottage! At consultation this evening we agreed to start early this morning. I privately requested Paora^† and two other of my natives from Hawke's Bay whom I could trust to keep a good watch over our Taupo guide during the night, lest he should give us the slip, a trick I had been served more than once in former travelling. Indeed, to prevent this on this occasion I had determined, if needs be, to bind him till morning.

“22nd.—Up early this morning, and left our wretched encampment at 6 o'clock. The frost was heavy, and it was bitterly cold, insomuch that we could scarcely fold up the tent. Unfortunately, however, the ice on the many pools and streamlets we had to cross after gaining the brow of our hill was not thick enough to bear one's weight, and so we were obliged to go through it. Crash! souse into the cold water, of which my poor companions with their naked feet loudly complained. Here, in one of these watery hollows, and partly submerged, grew a little shrubby plant which I had not before seen, and never again found. It proved to be a new species of Logania (L. depressa). It cost me a good wetting and cold shivering to get specimens. It was nearly 9·30 before we halted to breakfast, which we did on the banks of the River

Moawhango (now a swollen rapid), where we roasted our roast—a few potatoes which we had carefully reserved—my natives having then said they could travel better on roasted potatoes than on rice. We travelled on pretty steadily all this long day until 8 p.m. without halting, when we threw ourselves down among the fern quite exhausted and spiritless, not knowing how much farther we had to go before we should reach this long-looked-for Patea. Our guide, who had been lagging behind, although he had no load to carry, had sunk down some time before, declaring he could go no further, being faint through hunger; so, taking from him the course we had to steer (as far as he knew), we left him, believing that a good nap would refresh him. After a while we arose from our fern couch hunger-impelled, and, having broken off the tops of the branches of the large many-headed cabbage-trees (Cordyline australis), which grew close by, and which the light of the rising moon revealed, we made a fire, and roasted the stalks of the young leaves, which, though both tough and bitter, served to allay our pangs. The Cordyline trees of these parts are the largest I have ever seen. They are not only high and many-branched, but bulky also in the trunk.^* The whole route this day was very hilly and broken, with occasional heavy entangled virgin forests without the least vestige of any track, we having been obliged to keep much on the higher ground so as to avoid the streams in the valleys, which were overflowing, rapid, and dangerous. During this long day's march I subsisted on a raw potato, which I kept nibbling, and a few Gaultheria berries; in addition thereto following out the Maori plan of ‘hauling in the slack,’ in nautical language, or, in other words, of tightening up my travelling-belt, which I have always found in times of severe hunger to be of great service, although it makes it dangerous for stooping low. That night we all slept as we were in the fern around the fire.

“23rd.—Very early this morning our ‘guide,’ following our track, came up to us before we were well awake, and, finding from him we were at last really near the Patea villages, I, after he had rested awhile and eaten some roasted cabbagetree leaf-stalks, sent him on to the nearest village to inform the natives of our arrival and of our hungry state. A long night's sound sleep had done him a deal of good, he appearing a different man altogether, although he had had nothing to eat, and had passed the night in the open without a fire; tobacco, also, at that period not being in use. At 6 a.m. we also managed to hobble after him, stiff enough, following his

“Ngahue proceeded onwards, dwelt far off at Arahura, fixing his abode there (or, stronger still, permanently dwelling there). He broke off a portion of that fish (greenstone), and, carrying it with him, returned. Ngahue arriving at Te Wairere killed (or beat, or struck) the Moa; then (he) went (to) Tauranga (to) Whangaparaoa (and) returned to Hawaiki, and told he had seen the land whose riches (chief productions, or principal things) were greenstone and Moa.”

I now give John White's rendering of that same story^*:—

“Ngahue, at Te Wairere, saw the bird Moa, and killed one, and went back to Hawaiki and told the inhabitants of that land that he had discovered a country without human inhabitants, but where there was greenstone to be found.”

And yet again (another version): “Ngahue returned to Arahura, where he found the bird Moa near the Wairere waterfall, and killed one and carried it in a taha or ipu (calabash), and went back to Hawaiki, and informed the people of that land of a fine land called Aotearoa which he had discovered.”

And these two versions of that same story J. White gives as from two tribes—Ngatiawa and Ngatihau. Note the differences; premising that Grey's Maori version was old and early (before 1854), and, as Sir George says in his preface, obtained from the best Maori authorities.

In Grey's English translation little notice is taken of the Moa (just as in the original Maori); even its “killing” is omitted, although the only instance of the Moa being mentioned in any old story or legend: in J. White's (1887, nearly forty years after) the peculiar amplification—(a) the words “saw the bird Moa, and killed one”; and, again, (b) “found the bird Moa, and killed one, and carried it off in a calabash,” &c.

It may be observed, “But J. White's English rendering is that of the Maori relations from two tribes” (pp. 170, 171, part ii., l.c.). Yes; but note in that of Ngatiawa:—

1. “Ka kite” (a Ngahue) “i te Wairere, i reira te manu nei te Moa e tu ana ka patua e Ngahue,” &c. = Ngahue saw (or visited) Te Wairere (some high cliff), and there a single Moa standing. How closely this relation resembles that statement of the East Cape Maoris to me (January, 1838), of the one Moa standing on the top of the mountain Whakapunake; and

also that of the West Coast Maoris to Dieffenbach (1841), of the one Moa on Mount Egmont.^*

2. And so in that of Ngatihau, with the addition that the Moa (flesh, I suppose) was collected into a calabash by Ngahue (evidently knowing nothing of the size of the Moa).

3. And in both traditions the word “manu = bird” is given, a modern addition, which is not in the older one of Grey's. The syntax of these two Maori statements is not that of an old Maori, but of a pakeha = foreigner, stranger, and I believe to be John White's own peculiar diction.

4. Be that as it may, two things are clear—(1) The casual brief notice of the Moa as a thing of no importance in the older Maori version; and (2) the growth of the legend in the two later Maori versions of the same story.

5. And then the period (before the so-called migration from Hawaiki) and also the place where the Moa was killed (in the South Island) are the same in all three versions, from which (their united narration) we may clearly gather—(1) the great antiquity of the story, and (2) the one solitary mountain Moa being only then met with in the South Island together with the greenstone; although Ngahue had also travelled largely in the North one, both in going and in returning.

Again, note the peculiar use of this word “kai” in the older version quoted. (See note, p. 505.)

In a paper read before the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Institute^† in July, 1883, in giving several meanings of the word “kai,” I have among them the following:—

“A very old meaning of ‘kai’ as a noun is movable property, possessions, goods, treasures, chattels—valuables in the estimation of the ancient Maoris” (l.c., p. 97). And here we have a good example of it.

In comparing the two translations of M. de Quatrefages' paper I find very little difference between them; only to this modern one there is a long concluding narration tacked on and made a postscript to the older paper, written in May, 1889, and supplied, as M. Quatrefages states, by Sir Walter Buller, who had sent him a copy of the New Zealand Times of November, 1888, containing that peculiar story of comparatively modern Moa-hunting communicated by Colonel McDonnell. Strange that only such additional information (“fresh evidence,” as it is called) should have become known to M. de Quatrefages after all those years, and just as strange that Sir Walter Buller should not have known of any other.

My task is done. I did not intend to write another line on this subject of the Moa age, but in this same volume (xxv.), in the Proceedings of the Wellington Philosophical Society, are many observations made at different meetings of the Society by the members present on this theme. Some of them I am really sorry to find recorded there, because they are merely the old, old stories and tales which have long ago been answered, and shown to be untenable, and refuted, and therefore such should not be again resurrected. Indeed, in so doing, the truth—the “true facts”—will never be arrived at; and that true and proper remark of Max Müller (in his late lectures at Glasgow, as brought forward by me in a paper in this same volume, p. 496) is very applicable here: “What is of immense importance in all scientific discussions is the spirit of truth. To make light of a fact that has been established, to ignore intentionally an argument which we cannot refute, to throw out guesses which we know we cannot prove—nay, which we do not even attempt to prove—is simply wrong, and poisons the air in which true science can breathe and live” (“Gifford Lectures,” 1891, p. 81). And as I have read of those remarks having been made before (both in the back volumes of Transactions as well as in the Wellington papers of the day), I would, as a member of the Society, beg to be permitted to call the attention of some of our prominent speakers at those meetings to what they have said on this subject.

Mr. Travers, for instance, says, “We could not judge of this matter from the Maoris of the present day, but fifty years ago they were familiar with the existence of this bird” (l.c., p. 531). Now, it seems very hard that such a statement (oft repeated too) should pass unnoticed. It was in January, 1838, that I myself first moved in this matter (as I have fully and clearly shown in my long paper in vol. xii., Transactions), and I left no stone unturned to glean something tangible about it—in travelling throughout much of the North Island, from Poverty Bay to Cape Maria Van Diemen (a zigzag course to all Maori villages as ordered), during which I now and then fell in with chiefs who had seen Cook and also been on board of his ship, which would take back to another fifty years; by friends and acquaintances among Europeans settled and trading in various parts; by rewards; by young Maori chiefs returning to their homes and tribes from our head mission-station in the Bay of Islands; by letters to our Maori Christian teachers and catechists—and the result was Nil. And there were others succeeding me, fifty years ago, who also travelled much throughout this North Island (Dr. Dieffenbach, for instance), and their united report is exactly

the same—Nil. Why, then (may I not ask Mr. Travers) are we not believed? Why every year repeatedly bring up that old, old, and wretched remark, “that fifty years ago the Maoris were familiar with the existence of this bird,” when the very ancient legend of Ngahue alone (above related) goes far to prove its incorrectness? (I feel this the more in its coming from Mr. Travers, who professionally knows well the difference between true and false facts, and how easy it is to adduce charges, however insignificant and erroneous, when defendant is out of Court.)

And just so, again, with Mr. Maskell. I really feel ashamed when I read (both on these and on former occasions) his illogical remarks, his strong affirmations, respecting not only the Moa age, but also the Maori legends and the very language itself, of all which, I beg to tell him, he really knows nothing. Surely Mr. Maskell must know full well the difference between legends and legends! Indeed, he says he does; and that, “whilst he thought little of Maori legends, he did value European traditions”—no doubt!—“and he well remembered hearing the late Sir F. Weld state often that when he started from Nelson, somewhere about 1848, to make the first journey overland to what is now Canterbury, the Maoris warned him to be very careful of the large birds which he would meet with in the mountains, and which would kick him to death if they could. That was a tradition worth any number of Maori legends” (l.c., p. 531; and again repeated p. 535). Now, I have already, nearly twenty years ago, shown the probable origin of much of that talk^*—at all events, of its modern and foreign embellishments. But, I would ask, where is the “European tradition” here? Is not the simple relation by Sir F. Weld of what the Maoris had told him their legend? And where is the radical difference between this legend of theirs and that given by them to Dr. Dieffenbach on the same subject nearly ten years before?—namely, “The Maoris could not understand what induced me to seek to ascend Mount Egmont; they tried much to dissuade me from the attempt, by saying that the mountain was tapu—that there were ngarara (crocodiles) on it, which would undoubtedly eat me. The mysterious bird ‘Moa’ (of which I shall say more hereafter) was also said to exist there. But I answered that I was not afraid of these creatures of their lively imagination” (vol. i., p. 140).

No one would stand up more strongly for the true position of an expert in his own peculiar line as a successful describer of Coccididæ (and of Mr. Maskell in that capacity we have good reason to be proud); but what would Mr. Maskell say,

or think (say) of me, were I, on any occasion when one of his favourite papers was being read, to speak of such in his own way, using his own language which he so frequently uses towards us—myself and other Maori philologists—who, if not equally experts, must certainly be allowed to know something more than Mr. Maskell of those Maori matters, to which we have given many years of time and research and study? I confess to feeling both ashamed and sorry when I read Mr. Maskell's statement re this paper of M. de Quatrefages (bearing in mind, as I have shown, the grave omission of many true facts from its pages), who said that “he was proud of having been the first to bring that paper under the notice of this colony several years ago in the pages of the ‘New Zealand Journal of Science,’”^* and now, with all its errors, omissions, and suppressions, actually bringing it forward again.

I trust that both Mr. Travers and Mr. Maskell, for whom I have great respect, will forgive me in my thus writing warmly on a matter in which I am so deeply interested, as, from my age, &c., I may never write again. The old Latin proverb is applicable here both to them and to me—“Ne sutor ultra crepidam”: may we all be enabled to observe it.

And here I would communicate the very excellent and apposite remarks lately made by Professor Rudolph Virchow, in his Croonian lecture delivered before the Royal Society: “Who of us is not in need of friendly encouragement in the changing events of life? True happiness is not based on the appreciation of others, but on the consciousness of one's own honest labour. How otherwise should we preserve the hope of progress and of final victory in face of the attacks of opponents and the insults which are spared to nobody who comes before the public? He who during a long and busy life is exposed to public opinion certainly learns to bear unjust criticism with equanimity, but this comes only through the confidence that his cause is just, and that some day it must triumph. Such is our hope in our wrestlings for progress in science and art…. Happy is he who has courage enough to keep up or regain his relations with other men, and to take part in the common work. Thrice happy is he who does not lack in this work the flattering commendation of esteemed colleagues.”^†

In fine, the prolific root or cause of error with M. de Quatrefages, and with most of those who have written or spoken on this matter of the Moa—i.e., of the Moa age—arises from their believing in the myth of Hawaiki and the migration therefrom, and in fixing that period at 500 years ago. To

me, having long and carefully considered the whole matter in its various phases and bearings, and having no pet theory of my own to support or vamp up, both are alike preposterous and void of true literal foundation. At the same time, there is concealed within them a deep esoteric meaning hidden and masked; not dissimilar, however, to, and possibly more reasonable than, what has obtained among other ancient and highly-civilised people concerning their origins. Much as Max Müller has truly and eloquently expressed it: “Language threw its web of metaphors around the truths of which it spoke, and by a natural mistake men came to take the metaphors for facts.”^* But on this deep recondite subject I cannot at present enter.

Lastly, I may observe that, in my long and exhaustive article on the Moa (so often referred to by me in this paper), I concluded it with the words of the celebrated Roman historian Tacitus, when writing on the Phænix, a bird of great antiquity, which had given him, and other philosophers before him, an immense amount of labour. Tacitus, after recounting the many old stories respecting it, including recent tales, says, “The accounts of antiquity concerning this bird are enveloped in doubt and obscurity…. These accounts are not entitled to unqualified credit, and their uncertainty is increased by the admixture of matter palpably fabulous; but that this bird has been at some time seen in Eygpt is not questioned.”^† That conclusion, made nearly 2,000 years ago, still recommends itself to us as a fair and a rational one. And yet I find, on lately reading in an ancient Roman author of note contemporary with Tacitus, just the very opposite remarks and conclusions respecting this same fabulous bird. And as such may be little known to this audience, the work containing it being scarce, and the subject somewhat analogous to this one of the extinct Moa and its age, I will briefly quote it:—

“There is a certain bird called a Phænix. Of this there is never but one at a time, and that lives 500 years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it makes itself a nest of frankincense and myrrh and other spices, into which, when its time is fulfilled, it enters and dies; but its flesh putrifying breeds a certain worm, which, being nourished with the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and when it is grown to a perfect state it takes up the nest in which the bones of its parent lie and carries it from Arabia into Egypt, to a city called Heliopolis; and, flying in open day in the sight of all men, lays it upon the

altar of the sun, and so returns from whence it came. The priests then search into the records of the time, and find that it returned precisely at the end of 500 years.” And then the author goes on to say, “Let us consider this wonderful type (or sign) of the Resurrection, when even by a bird the Lord of all shows us his power to fulfil his promise,” &c.^* Thus, again, proving to a demonstration how easy it is to swallow everything related, however strange, as veritable facts, and so jump to the desired conclusion.

Of course, my only reason for bringing these two notions together here is to show the very great disparity of opinion then existing respecting the Phænix, much the same as now, unfortunately, appertain to the Moa age.

P.S.—Since closing my paper I have received a copy of the “Report of the Fourth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science” (just published), and I find in the address of the Rev. Lorrimer Fison, M.A., the president of the anthropological section, such very appropriate statements—the very counterpart of my own thoughts and ideas—that I hesitate not to copy a portion of them. The president, too, evidently writes as a practical man well acquainted with his subject.

“… In these investigations”—anthropological—“two things mainly are required: first, a patient continuance in the collecting of facts; and secondly, the faculty of seeing in them what is seen by the natives themselves. We must ever remember that our mind-world is very different from theirs…. As to the former of these two requisites, one's natural tendency, especially in the beginning of the work, is to form a theory as soon as one has got hold of a fact; and as to the latter, we are too apt to look at the facts in savagery from the mental standpoint of the civilised man. Both of these are extremely mischievous. They lead investigators into fatal mistakes, and bring upon them much painful experience, for the pang attending the extraction of an aching double-tooth is sweetest bliss when compared with the tearing up by the roots of a cherished theory. I speak feelingly here, because I can hold myself up as an awful warning against theory-making.”—[An instance given.]—“Even more mischievous is the habit of looking at the facts in savagery from our own standpoint. Some of our modern anthropologists' books are full of errors arising from this evil habit—errors which are ‘gross and palpable’ to any one who has lived long among savages, and taken the pains to learn to see with their eyes. ‘You can feel the mistakes with a stick,’ said a good Lutheran missionary (one of Mr. Howitt's correspond-

left little to be seen. I expressed a wish to see the place, and he at once guided me there.

The signs of habitation consisted of charred posts, the uprights or supports of several whares; in one or two places the battens and thatch of a roof lay on the ground, having partly escaped the burning. Several pieces of a broad flat board, some 2 ½in. thick, were near by, and may have been part of a canoe. It was pierced by holes in several places, some square in shape, others circular, and one large square hole about 3in. in diameter, which might have been a place to step a mast. Of the remains of tools was one small iron adze, which had been so much sharpened that all the steeling was ground away. From the eye of this adze it was evident that its smallness was not owing altogether to frequent sharpenings, but that it originally was of a small make. For chisels were half a dozen large spike-nails, bevelled on one edge only; and some very curious remains of knives were lying about. My first opinion was that they had been made from old hoop-iron, partly from their decayed appearance, and also from the peculiar way in which they had been fitted into handles, of which latter remained no vestige. The blades were either filed away or otherwise sharpened to a flat four-sided apex at the proximate end, which had then been driven into a hole in the handle; the outer end was rounded like a dinner-knife. They were large and clumsy, and gave the idea of a primitive make. In reference to these knives, I seem to have somewhere read an account of travels among the islands, where this entry is made: “The cooper was set to work to make knives from hoop-iron, to barter with the natives.” Perhaps these were of such make, and given to those Maoris by the people of some “whaler” many years ago. Of the use of spike-nails as chisels we have Captain Cook's evidence that the Maori had found them of more utility than their former implements of stone or bone. In Cook's First Voyage, he says of the Maoris near Cape Campbell, “They came on board with very little invitation, and their behaviour was courteous and friendly…We soon perceived that our guests had heard of us, for as soon as they came on board they asked for whou [whao], the name by which nails were known among the people with whom we had trafficked; but though they had heard of nails it was plain they had seen none, for when nails were given them they asked Tupia^* what they were. The term whou, indeed, conveyed to them the idea not of their quality but only of their use, for it is the same by which they distinguish a tool, commonly made of bone, which they use both as an auger and

matter; and, granted these, there is practically no limit to the activity of their processes, nor to the amount of noxious organic matter they can dispose of, converting it into harmless innocuous compounds. These useful little organisms exert a powerful influence in nature, the magnitude of which is seldom realised. They have a wonderful power of adaptability, and can modify their constitution to suit the circumstances, becoming, like most living things, educated to their environments. This will be exemplified later.

Sewage, the other factor in the chemico-biological process I am about to describe, delivered at an outfall after flowing a considerable distance in a closed channel, consists of nitrogenous compounds, chiefly in solution, the solids, for the most part, being suspended in finely-divided particles; but sewage contains also within itself, potentially, the power of its own destruction. Countless myriads of the bacteria of decomposition carry on their disintegrating processes, and all that is required to complete the chemico-biological change initiated by the vital process is a plenteous supply of the ever-obliging oxygen of the air, readily accessible.

We have, then, on the one hand soil—a medium containing in its interstices oxygen as air, and myriads of bacteria, whose favourite diet is dead animal or nitrogenous matter; and on the other hand the water of an abundant water-carriage system—a medium containing this very dead nitrogenous material, with an equal number of greedy bacteria. The oxygen and bacteria in the soil and the nitrogen and bacteria in the sewage are the factors which, when brought together under suitable circumstances, bring about a transformation of the most impure liquids into a pure and sparkling water that the most fastidious could drink of and commend, soluble mineral constituents, known generally as nitrates and nitrites, only being present—the chemical indication that the change known as oxidation or nitrification has been complete.

To illustrate, corroborate, and amplify this, let me describe an experiment conducted in the laboratory: A long glass cylinder is filled with pure sand. There are few or no bacteria and little or no organic matter, but because of the looseness of the sand-particles there is abundance of oxygen as air—about 50 per cent. A small pipe leads a supply of very impure water on to the surface of the sand in this artificial filter, while a tap at the bottom of the cylinder allows the filtrate to be caught and examined.

The first of the fluid filtering through is found to be almost entirely as impure as that distributed on the surface of the sand, only some of the coarser particles being retained. The bacteria are as numerous, the amount of putrescible nitrogenous compounds and ammonia is the same, and there is an

absence of nitrates and nitrites, this absence, as I have already said, being the chemical indication that no oxidation or nitrification has taken place in the passage of the fluid through the sand. But let the process of filtration continue for twenty-four hours and another sample be examined, a marked improvement in the filtered fluid is at once noticed, and chemical and biological examination show that the putrescible nitrogen and ammonia are diminished, and the bacteria are fewer in number, while the nitrates and nitrites are largely increased. This improvement keeps going on till the fluid passing through the sand is as absolutely pure and sparkling as the finest spring water. Chemically tested it reveals absolute freedom from all organic matter and ammonia, with the presence of a considerable amount of the innocent mineral compounds nitrates and nitrites. Tested biologically there is a complete absence of bacteria; in. short, this water is purer than most drinking-water, and no one would hesitate to drink of and appreciate it. This mysterious and marvellous conversion of the foulest liquid into the purest water will continue for many days, but gradually the affluent will lose its purity, and in time will become as noxious as the original fluid, and get extremely foul. But if now the flow of the impure liquid on the surface of the sand be stopped for twenty-four hours, and then resumed, the affluent will again become pure as before, If, further, this cessation of the flow is permitted upon alternate days, or upon one day out of three, by other cylinders being placed beside the original one, the purification of the foul liquid experimented with may go on indefinitely without any renewal of the sand or impairment of its efficiency. This process of purification is known as “intermittent downward filtration.”

If the experiment I have just described be extended by planting in the surface of the sand various garden-plants they will, of course, grow luxuriantly, provided other conditions of warmth and light be attended to, and the nitrates and nitrites hitherto present in the filtrates will diminish and almost entirely disappear, the water issuing from the tap being pure and sparkling as before, differing only in being free from its mineral compounds. This process of purification extended to agricultural land is known as “broad irrigation,” or “sewage farming.”

If the chemical and vital processes which have taken place in the sand be examined more closely they will be found to depend upon the presence and labours of the minute bacteria before referred to. The particles of sand get coated with a slimy material secreted by the bacteria themselves, and in this they live in countless myriads, taking from the organic nitrogenous matter in solution as it slowly trickles past them

the elements they require for the support of their tiny bodies. The other elements of the organic compounds are thus let loose, and are seized by the oxygen of the air between the particles of sand, forming the mineral compounds already referred to as nitrates and nitrites.

The presence of oxygen in the air-spaces of the sand is thus essential to the chemical change; but the constant saturation in the first experiment described prevents the renewal of the air-supply, and the success of the purification process is thus frustrated. Hence the necessity for intermittency in the application of the liquid to be purified. When the flow is stopped the contained fluid drains off, and air, bearing its bounteous supply of oxygen, again fills the spaces. The new compounds formed by this chemical process (oxidation or nitrification, as it is called) are the nitrates and nitrites, which, being soluble, are carried on with the water, providing there are no plants to feed upon them. But nitrates constitute the best and most easily-assimilated food for plants; and as the chemico-biological process I have described takes place most largely near the surface, where the bacteria are most numerous, it is apparent that the most favourable conditions for the growth of plants are here to be found. The assimilation of the nitrates and nitrites by the plants in the above experiment, illustrative of broad irrigation, explains their absence from the effluent water.

These principles applied to the disposal of sewage by application to the soil constitute the scientific basis of sewage farming. But a sewage farm, to be successful, must effectually dispose of sewage as sewage by converting the solids into plants, and the liquids into pure water, without nuisance or injury to health. Now, can this be done? The experience of years rings out a chorus of emphatic affirmation. If the laws arising out of chemico-biological experiments be conformed to in the management of a sewage farm the solids can be converted into the finest plants and the liquids into the purest water without the slightest nuisance or injury to health. Dr. Cornill tells us that he drank freely of the limpid streamlets of the Berlin Sewage Farm. Many sewage farms are favourite Sunday resorts, and strangers are frequently surprised to be told, while they admire the luxuriant vegetation, and breathe the pure air, that they are on one of the walks in the middle of a sewage farm.

But though this brilliant consummation can be attained, and is being attained in some of the most populous towns in different parts of the world, it is not an easy nor an inexpensive matter. Conditions must be favourable to the working of a sewage farm. Land must be available at an elevation sufficient to permit of underdrainage if the soil is retentive of

moisture. Underdrainage by laying porous pipes at a depth of about 6ft. is an important because it is an expensive matter. A loose friable surface-soil, with a subsoil of coarse gravel, can be worked without underdrainage, as in Croydon. But whenever the soil for a considerable depth is favourable to the retention of water underdrainage is necessary, for it must be remembered that sewage must pass through, not over, the soil in order to fulfil sanitary requirements. Many farms have no underdrainage, and in some, with very impervious clayey subsoil, the managers are content to allow the sewage to flow over the land, finding that after about a mile of flow it is comparatively pure, and the amount of water small in quantity. But though underdrainage is necessary to allow of the rapid relief of the land from moisture, and the consequent aëration of the soil, it is found that, except in rainy weather, there is not much flow in the affluent drain-pipes, sometimes the whole quantity of water passing upwards through the vegetation of the farm by evaporation.

Pure sandy soil is an extremely suitable one for sewage farming, and the most luxuriant crops are very soon produced, while the cost of levelling and draining is usually less than for most others. A gentle slope is necessary for the purpose of irrigation, while what is known as the “ridge and furrow” system is adopted for the growth of vegetables, and a system of gentle slopes, with grips, for the growth of grass-crops. Vegetables are planted on the tops of the ridges, and the furrows convey the sewage at a slow pace. The area required where the dry-weather flow varies from 20 to 40 gallons per head is 1 acre for every hundred of the population. If “intermittent downward filtration” alone be adopted for the disposal of sewage, 1 acre for every thousand of the population is sufficient.

It is advisable, whenever much rain-water is admitted to the sewers, to have a small area of well-prepared filter-beds, for downward filtration in wet weather, for the disposal of any excess of sewage, or when it is not required for the purposes of irrigation.

In a properly-laid-out farm tanks receive the sewage at the outfall when it issues from the main sewer, and here the larger solids are retained and collected and dug into the soil with town ashes and refuse, making a very superior and profitable manure. A main open carrier, formed generally of concrete or of split pipes, conveys the sewage from the tanks through the centre of the farm. Grips in the land, or on the tops of ridges, strike out at right-angles from this main carrier, and opposite these grips stoppers are placed by the workmen every now and then, causing an overflow of the sewage, and

its distribution over the land. This is done intermittently, and, as a rule, the irrigation of growing crops is avoided; but as the primary object of a sewage farm is to dispose of the sewage, and not to grow crops, whenever it is necessary for such disposal the sewage is turned on to the crops, in spite of the wholesale destruction often caused by such a procedure. This unfortunate necessity in the name and for the sake of health is the consideration which determines the management of a sewage farm.

It has been shown repeatedly that tenants will not dispose of sewage to the ruin of their crops, and the responsibility of efficient management has therefore devolved entirely upon the Board of Works or local sanitary authority. But small areas can be let to market-gardeners, the local Board agreeing to supply sewage upon demand; or the whole farm may be let if the stipulation be made that the whole of the sewage is to be disposed of without nuisance or injury to health.

The amount of farm produce raised upon sewage farms is sometimes phenomenal. On the Craigentinny Meadows (originally drifting sea-sand), irrigated by the sewage of Edinburgh, from 50 to 70 tons of grass per acre are raised, yielding thus about £36 per acre. Rye-grass is about the most abundant crop grown, as this grass has a wonderful power of absorbing sewage, and five and seven cuttings are taken off each acre annually, yielding in all from 30 to 50 tons per acre. The Sewage of Towns Commission concluded that experience had shown that, with the application of 5,000 tons of sewage per acre per annum to meadow-lands, an average of 1,000 gallons of milk had been produced from the cattle fed upon the produce; and, further, that an average gross return of £30 to £35 per acre per annum in milk, at 8d. per gallon, might be expected. Dr. Corfield quotes evidence to show that land which “formerly let at from £2 to £6 per Scotch acre is now let annually at from £30 to £40, and that poor sandy land on the seashore, which might be worth 2s. 6d. per acre, lets at an annual rent of from £15 to £20.”

These figures might at first sight lead one to suppose that the profits arising from sewage farming must be considerable; but it is not so. The amount of capital absorbed in the acquisition of land, and in its preparation, the number of hands required to do the work, and the constant risk of rainy weather, with its accompanying losses, all tend to make sewage farming a hazardous undertaking from a financial standpoint.

The following table gives some of the information I have been able to collect in reference to the initial outlay, the expenditure, and the incomes of sewage farms:—

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Speaking generally, sewage farming does not pay as an agricultural enterprise, and authorities are unanimous in the opinion that if the farming operations clear expenses, or yield a small profit, this is all any local body is justified in expecting, and this only when the local conditions are favourable. In estimating the profit and loss of sewage farms, rent, in the shape of interest upon the capital outlay, must be left out of account. If this item be taken into the estimate the figures show an enormous loss in the working of most sewage farms.

Dr. Corfield, in his work on the treatment and utilisation of sewage, comes to the following conclusions in reference to broad irrigation: “(1.) That by careful and well-conducted sewage irrigation (especially if combined with a filtration area) the purification of the whole liquid refuse of a town is practically perfect, and has been insured in cases where it was not at all the object of the agriculturist; and that it is the only process known by which that purification can be effected on a large or small scale. (2.) That perfectly worthless land—blowing sea-sand, for instance—can be made in this way to support large and valuable crops. (3.) That the quantity per acre of all crops obtained from even the best land is enormously increased. (4.) That it reduces to a great extent, or renders entirely unnecessary, the usual amount of artificial manures of all kinds by supplying a manure especially adapted, from its complex constitution, for the nourishment of crops; supplying it moreover in a state of solution—that is to say, in the most readily-absorbable condition; and supplying at the same time that most necessary aid to vegetation—water, which often converts what would otherwise have been

a heavy loss into a handsome profit. (5.) That by it the farmer is rendered entirely independent of drought; so that he can be practically certain of his crops, and, moreover, be able to transplant them as much as he pleases. (6.) That when circumstances are favourable it has been found to pay, and when its management is more thoroughly understood it will doubtless in many instances be found to be a source of income to the towns. Where the circumstances are not so favourable it will yet prove to be the most satisfactory way to get rid of the nuisance, although it may not entirely pay its expenses.”

Nothing is more thoroughly established in regard to this subject than the entire absence of anything like nuisance, or injury to the health of those on or in the immediate vicinity of sewage farms. The only semblance of nuisance that ever exists on a well-managed farm is at the outfall, and this is reduced to a minimum by prompt and effective treatment, and, at worst, the odour is no more offensive than that noticeable in the vicinity of any of our present sewer outfalls into the harbour. The bounteous production of ozone by the luxuriant vegetation of the farm corrects any tendency to the rise of miasmata from the soil, and actually purifies the air to a degree beyond that of the towns themselves. Dr. Cresswell says of the Norwood farm at Croydon: “As for effluvia, I will not say there does not exist any, but it is so seldom perceptible that a house built within 200 or 300 yards would command the same rent as if half a mile off.” Dr. Carpenter says that hundreds of persons exercise and recreate in the sewage farms of the Croydon Local Board of Health, and that visitors express surprise at the absence of everything offensive to sight and smell. The travelling correspondent to the Melbourne Age, in describing the sewage farms at Croydon, says, “It is only fair to admit that the health of the people who live upon the farm (seventy-two in number) is very good, and the only place where any unpleasant odour is traceable is at the sieves where the solid matter is arrested, an operation which takes place some distance away, and at the spot where the crude sewage is distributed over the first field.” Mr. Stayton, in his report to the New South Wales Government, says of the Berlin Sewage Farm, “The health of the labourers on the farms is very good, and the death-rate was only 11 per 1,000 during the last year; and it is rather a remarkable fact that, although there was a severe epidemic of typhoid during the first months of 1888 in this city, yet no case of disease occurred on any of the farms.”

Evidence is abundant and emphatic in declaring that the purest and healthiest mode of sewage disposal is by broad irrigation, and this method can be adopted in the immediate

vicinity of populous and favourite suburbs without nuisance or injury or depreciation in the value of property. The germs of disease liable to be carried in sewage are effectively disposed of by the bacteria of the soil; and it is remarkable that many infectious diseases which exist in the towns are conspicuously absent from the farms supplied by the town-sewage.

Generally speaking, the advantages of sewage farming are: (1.) The general wealth is increased by the increased production. (2.) Employment is given to many workmen.(3.) Sewage, as sewage, is absolutely and completely annihilated. (4.) Nature is imitated in the method of disposal, and the utmost use is made of waste products.

In determining whether the sewage disposal of Wellington should be by broad irrigation these general advantages of course apply, and local advantages also exist in the suitability of available land in the vicinity of the already-determined outfall; but the conditions unfavourable to sewage farming are numerous:—

1. The isthmus suggested as the site for a farm is exposed to the severe southerly winds and salt spray.

2. The amount of water to be disposed of is much greater than is found to be convenient on most sewage farms—50 gallons per head of the population is the dry-weather estimate for Wellington. The average applied to sewage farms is about 30 gallons, while in Berlin, where the best results are obtained, the dry-weather flow in twenty-four hours is only 21 gallons per head of the population.

3. The average annual rainfall here, according to a return prepared by Mr. Gore, is about 51in., and, as provision is made for the reception of a large amount of rainfall by the sewers, it is evident that in rainy weather an enormous quantity of sewage will have to be disposed of. The average rainfall of Berlin is 23in.

To justify the establishment of a sewage farm upon the isthmus, the following questions must be decided in the affirmative:—

1. Can a sufficient area of suitable land be bought, levelled, underdrained, and thoroughly prepared for farming at a cost not exceeding that required to extend the outfall to any other suitable place?

2. Would crops and stock be likely to thrive, in spite of the exposure to wind and spray arising from the situation?

3. Would the cost of labour, and the demand for farm and dairy produce, justify the expectation that financial results would compare favourably with those of other typical sewage farms?

ment in practice, than has resulted from the cures of a century.

Of all the diseases which come within the province of preventive medicine none bulks so largely in national importance as tuberculosis. Tuberculous diseases are the scourge of the British Isles, where scarcely a family is to be found that has not suffered directly or indirectly from this insidious foe. All civilised countries in temperate regions are afflicted by its ravages. It attacks its victims in the bloom of youth or in the flower of manhood, while those who are marked for its prey often show a clearness of intellect, a vivacity of character, and a loftiness of conduct much above the normal, making this disease responsible for the aphorism that “the good die young.”

Since Koch's discovery in 1882 of the bacillus of tubercle a complete revolution has taken place in our knowledge of tuberculosis. It is now held to be, and treated as, an infectious preventible disease, whose manifestations vary with—(1) the animal attacked, (2) the organ attacked, (3) the degree of infection.

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The cause of the disease is a minute vegetable organism belonging to the Schizomycetes, and known as the Bacillus tuberculosis. It is rod-shaped, 1/7000in. in length, and developes by the formation of spores. It flourishes best in dead or partially devitalised animal tissue, but when the disease is prevalent it abounds almost everywhere. The expectoration of a tuberculous man or animal contains millions of these organisms and their spores. After drying on pavements, floors, walls, or grass, the germs are carried about in the air, which is inhaled by others, or the grass may be eaten by stock previously free from infection. The presence of this minute organism in any of the body-tissues then constitutes tuberculosis; its absence makes the existence of the disease impossible; and it is this organism that has to be reckoned with in all public - health measures for the control of consumption. Rest, warmth, moisture, and nutriment are required in partially devitalised, non-resistent, or weakened animal tissue, to allow of a nidus being formed for the development of the bacillus. These conditions are found in the tops of the lungs of young people who restrain the functional activity of these areas by cramping the chest, especially if there is a constitutional weakness of the lung-tissue due to the disease having existed in the parents. In this sense only, it might here be remarked, is tubercular disease hereditary; the constitutional or tissue weakness is transmitted, and these weakened body-tissues become an easy prey to the invading bacillus. There is no direct transmission, though there may be maternal infection, and the child die in infancy.

The conditions necessary to successful invasion (rest, weakened tissue, &c.) are also present in the brain membranes of some young and weakly students—here tubercular meningitis arises; or in the knees of housemaids or men used to scrubbing floors—here “housemaid's knee,” or “white swelling,” arises; or the glands of the neck may be the seat of infection, or the bones of the spine, or the hip-joint, constituting the conditions known generally as spinal disease and hip disease respectively; or the lungs, the intestines, or the neck-glands in cattle may be affected, constituting bovine tuberculosis. In short, any part of the human body, or of the body of an ox, may become invaded by the bacillus of tubercle; and the want of uniformity in the nomenclature of the disease is due to the fact that the names were given before the true nature of the affection was understood.

It is not necessary to make reference to the destructive processes that go on after the invasion of the body-tissues by the bacillus of tubercle, as the purpose of this paper is to deal with the subject in its public-health aspect; and the points of importance in this connection are—(1) That tuberculosis is a germ disease; (2) that it exists in man and in some of the animals he uses for food; (3) that it is infectious, being communicable from man to man and animal to man; (4) that, being infectious, it is preventible; (5) and, being preventible, it comes within the province of State medicine.

First, then, tuberculosis is infectious; but the infection is not virulent, the vitality of the bacillus is low, and the conditions necessary to successful invasion are numerous; while the power of immunity, or resistance to infection, is an increasing factor in healthy individuals. But, apart from the bacterial nature of the disease, and the truth of the statement that diseases of germ origin are all more or less infectious, instances of direct infection are constantly under notice. Individuals in the same house are infected by each other; successive families following one another as tenants of the same house have fallen victims to the disease; and such houses have been known to be infected for generations. Respired air, or air vitiated by germs from dried expectoration, is the medium by which infection is conveyed in such places. The air in hospitals for consumptives has been found to contain the tubercle bacillus, and to have the power of inoculating nutritive media, from which the disease has been produced experimentally.

The milk and flesh of affected cattle form another, and perhaps the most important, medium by which the disease is communicated to man. That these tissues contain the bacilli of tuberculosis has been frequently demonstrated, and the disease has been produced experimentally through their agency.

The question of the degree of infective power of the tissues of an animal with only a local tuberculosis—for instance, diseased glands—is still unsettled, and forms the subject of a Royal Commission of the House of Commons now investigating the matter; but the Public Health Acts in England and Scotland assume that where a local tuberculous centre exists any and all of the body-tissues are infective. Of these tissues milk is by far the most dangerous, for it is used in the raw state, and most largely by children, who are susceptible to the disease in all its forms; and the frequency with which tuberculous symptoms manifest themselves soon after weaning has been urged as evidence of infection by milk.

It is certain, and is universally admitted, that a large amount of tuberculous disease is communicated to children by infected meat and milk, and the Health Acts of Britain are built upon this knowledge. Quite recently a butcher in the South of England was fined £30 and £7 costs for exposing meat from a diseased beast for sale. The penalties for this offence under all up-to-date Health Acts are very severe, and rightly so, for no one knows better than a butcher when he is dealing with infected meat, for every slaughter is a postmortem examination, and every butcher is, or ought to be, familiar with the indications of disease.

So well recognised in Britain is the infectiousness of tuberculosis that at the annual Congress of the British Institute of Public Health, held in Edinburgh last month, Dr. G. E. Squire, of London, read a paper entitled “Should Pulmonary Consumption be included in the Notification Act?” in which he urged that this step is necessary to control the spread of this disease, and was supported in his contention by many distinguished health officers.

Amongst cattle themselves grass very readily gets infected by expectoration, discharge, and excreta, and the communicability amongst stock is very marked, and manifest to all breeders. About two years ago, when spending a short holiday in Taranaki, I was induced by my friend Mr. York, of the Hawera Star, to examine several young cattle said to be “wasters”—a name given by the farmers to those animals that, for no obvious reason, suddenly began to waste away, and to eventually die. There was absolutely no evidence of disease upon a casual examination of three two-year olds I specially examined; they simply looked ill-fed and half-starved. I was assured that they had come from good paddocks, that their fellows were sleek and fat, and that from past experience these young beasts were doomed to waste away and die. A butcher dissected up these animals for me, and I found that, though, all the other organs were apparently healthy, the intestines, on being opened, were studded with

small tuberculous ulcers throughout. This cleared up the mystery of these “wasters.” Young stock feeding on infected grass developed intestinal tuberculosis, nutrition was interfered with; the disease once established was practically incurable, and the unfortunate animals, after living long enough to spread the infection widely, gradually sank and died. Upon the suggestion of Mr. York I delivered a lecture at Hawera upon the nature and preventive treatment of tuberculosis, and was told subsequently that within a fortnight fifty head of suspected stock were killed by the owners themselves.

From a return^* very kindly prepared for me by Mr. Von Dadelszen, showing the relative mortality from tuberculous diseases in New Zealand for the years 1882 and 1892, I find that while, on the whole, the amount, of disease has decreased, the deaths from tuberculosis in Taranaki and Hawke's Bay have increased. In Wellington, Nelson, Westland, and Otago the mortality has remained about the same; while in Auckland, Marlborough, and Canterbury it has considerably abated.

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This disease, then, can only be controlled by preventive measures, and these may be divided into individual prevention and State prevention. Under individual prevention such precautions should be taken as the destruction of all sputa by burning, the comparative isolation of phthisical patients, the thorough purification of apartments used by such, the boiling of suspected milk, and the thorough cooking of suspected meat. The natural resistance of the body-tissues of all young and growing people should be increased by chest exercises, such as singing, rowing, and varied gymnastics; while hygienic laws should be thoroughly and consistently taught in all schools, and be allowed to replace much of the rubbish now crammed into young heads.

State legislation can and should be made a most important factor in the control of this much-dreaded disease. State enactments for the prevention of disease are amongst the proudest advances in modern legislation, and the Public Health Act of London, 1891, is a triumphant monument to the life and labours of members of a noble profession, and to wise and philanthropic legislators, who have eagerly seized upon their scientific discoveries and embodied them in humane enactments for the diminution of suffering, the promotion of happiness, and the public good. When we think of what medical science has done for London alone we wonder at the few there are who give her thanks. She has given to the lowly habitations of this great city the light of the sun and the pure air of heaven; she has led sparkling water from the hillsides to the meanest homes; she has pulled down the hovels of the poor and built them palaces; she has cleansed her streets and put guardians in her gates; she has banished typhus, controlled small-pox and cholera, and poured the balm of Gilead into a million wounds; she has saved the health and life of countless numbers, and exceeded every other humane factor in her contribution to the cup of human happiness. And all this through the agency of public-health legislation.

But very much still remains to be done, and could more readily be accomplished if there were a closer bond of unity between medical science and legislation; and the want of this is not the fault of the former, for science prays and beseeches long and patiently before her haughty sister will condescend to listen.

Perhaps in no part of the world is public health so well and extensively administered as in England and Scotland; and there is now a well-founded and growing demand for a Government Department of Public Health, with a Minister at its head. At no distant date the Mother-country will have accomplished this great reform. Our New Zealand Govern-

ment boasts that it leads the world in Liberal legislation, but it is far behind other countries in the matter of State medicine.

Nothing but legislative interference—compulsory, not permissive legislation, which is a farce—will protect the public of New Zealand from the danger that exists from the alarming amount of tuberculosis at present to be found amongst stock. And more especially is this an urgent question for Wellington, which gets some, at least, of its beef and butter from the most infected districts in the colony. And the legislative remedy is not a difficult nor a complex problem: the establishment of public abattoirs, the licensing and thorough inspection of all dairies, with adequate penalties for offences against the Act, would satisfy the demands of public health, as it does in other parts better off than ourselves for hygienic laws; and it will not redound to the credit of our legislators if, in the face of an abundant knowledge on the subject, the health and life of the people are not protected by useful legislation in this direction.

The London Model Abattoir Society has done much to popularise the public slaughter-house system; and its reports, gathered from the experience of about fifty towns in England and Wales, clearly show that the abattoir system is the only means by which the sale of diseased meat can be absolutely controlled. By this system a public slaughter-house is established on the outskirts of the city by either the municipality or a private company. The buildings generally consist of sale-yards and slaughter-yards, conveniently arranged and paved throughout, with every provision for the humane treatment of the animals to be slaughtered. In the best managed provision is made for the immediate boiling, preparation, or disposal of all readily decomposable material, and an abundant supply of water at high pressure insures thorough cleanliness throughout. It is at these abattoirs only that thorough inspection can be practised, and this is done by competent meat-inspectors, who either stamp or certify to the wholesomeness of the meat sent to the retailers, and it is made a punishable offence for any meat to be conveyed or exposed for sale within the municipality that has not been certified to. A small fee is charged for the use of these abattoirs, and as a rule they clear expenses—some pay well, and very few indeed are worked at a loss.

The advantages of the abattoir system are: (1.) It is the gateway through which all animal food must pass to the consumer, and at which it must receive the certificate of a qualified meat-inspector. (2.) Efficient inspection of a large number of private slaughter-yards, scattered round the town, is costly and practically impossible. (3.) Provision can more

the dust and dirt of centuries; but they may be as truly relics of the past—message-bearing relics—as the fragment of clay cylinder or the stone arrow-head.

It is probably a general, and it is certainly a convenient, way of observing the customs, language, &c., of an uncivilised people to regard them as being the possessions of a primitive people; to look upon the wild strangers not only as savages, but as being the descendants of savages. On the Asiatic and African Continents such conclusions have been in some cases counterchecked by that which ancient history has told us, but, in regard to races of which little is known, the common method of regarding them is as barbarians, root and branch. This easy way of dismissing the subject is the method of the child with the fragments of ancient pottery, not caring for the maker because unconscious that centuries ago such a person existed; but for those who possess the spirit of inquiry and who will take the trouble rewards of discovery are surely waiting. If I assert that the language, customs, and traditions of the Polynesian Maoris have internal and almost unmistakable evidence that the forefathers of these Maoris once knew a higher culture than they possessed at the time of their discovery by Cook, I touch upon a field of inquiry which can be searched in many different directions, and which invites many workers, whose varieties of disposition and attainment will assist each other.

It would take up far too much space for a paper of this kind if I should descant on the examples of decadence which history presents to us. We have seen that sovereign cities like Nineveh, Babylon, Carthage, Tyre, Palmyra, and Thebes can pass away utterly from the active life of the world; while others, like Athens, Rome, Byzantium, and Alexandria, have been peopled by men little fitted to represent the fame of earth's dead masters. To-day we may pass among the Arabs as among the South Sea Islanders,^* and, asking the names of the builders of what are now gigantic ruins, be answered, “These were built by the gods, or by the evil spirits, in old time.” We even find that in Malacca the descendants of the Portuguese conquerors have fallen lower than the wild tribes around them, and have become bookless, letterless, nameless, immoral savages. How this decadence is wrought is not always easy to trace—probably in no two cases are the causes precisely the same; but the result is the same—forgetfulness and intellectual paralysis.

If we narrow down the inquiry to the case of the Polynesian Islanders, and admit for a moment, as a hypothesis, that it is possible that they once knew a higher civilisation, it

is pertinent to ask, “What caused forgetfulness?” It probably arose from emigration, and the result was worked out in two different ways. If a body of explorers, seeking new abodes, sets out among strange people armed for war, unless the expedition finds a higher civilisation than it left behind, or is constantly renewed by accessions in numbers from the parent country, the issue is almost certain to be degeneracy in culture. If we picture such an expedition starting, we see many armed men, few women (if any), few priests or other representatives of learning, and only such animals and such stores of food as can be most compactly stowed. Such a party emigrating into unknown seas has little chance of return; those who survive will take wives of the women of the country they colonise; hard work and hard fighting are their lot, and the finer, softer things of life are forgotten. Such we may imagine to have been the case with the New Zealand Maoris: in a variable climate, and in a land where animal food was scarce, sustenance would have to be wrung from earth and sea only by the incessant efforts of “the strong man armed.” In Eastern Polynesia and the islands lying nearer the tropics a different cause for deterioration presents itself. In lands where the work of a single day can provide food for a year, where the warm sun tempts to repose, and nature basks in prodigal luxuriance of vegetation, toil of any kind seems out of place, and laziness becomes one of the first duties of man. In this land of the lotus-eaters arts and artifices are forgotten, the calabash replaces the earthen vessel, the girdle of leaves becomes the successor of the woven garment, the bamboo knife is easier to procure than the blade, the metal of which must be smelted from the scarce and heavy ore.

This is, of course, a mere hypothesis; we see the islanders in their girdles of leaves, with their calabashes and their bamboo knives; we have no circumstantial evidence to show that they adopted these to the neglect of materials requiring more labour or skilled direction in manufacture. But there may be evidence which is not circumstantial, yet convincing; and a convergence of many lines may indicate a point as certainly as one line leading directly to the object. That in the case of the Maoris we find a possibility of rapid forgetfulness and deterioration is shown historically in their having forgotten the use of the double canoe within the present century, a thing hardly to be believed had we not the best evidence on the subject. If so useful, roomy, seaworthy a vessel as the double canoe (or even the outrigged canoe) can pass from memory in so short a time, we can easily understand how, in the thousands of years which lie behind us, the Maori could forget arts, appliances, and culture which did not seem

absolutely necessary for “the survival of the fittest” under adverse conditions. Amongst the lost arts which I believe their language and myths indicate is that of communication in a written language; and it is to this branch of inquiry that I shall confine myself in the present instance.^*

If we look at the tattooing of a Maori as a mere piece of ornamentation, I think we are regarding it as the child does the fragment of the cinerary urn. Some patterns of tattooing have undoubtedly become mere ornament, but I trust to be able to show a convergence of lines of evidence that will prove that such was not the original intention of tattooing as understood by the South-Sea Islander. Tattooing, as is well known, is almost a world-wide practice: it was used by our own ancestors up to the time of the Conquest, and in our army and navy is still a common custom. It differs according to the race, but it is divisible into two classes as to manner: the method by scar-making, and the pattern by puncture. The scar tattoo is generally used by savages—Africans, Papuans, Australians, Negritos, &c.; the punctured patterns by Japanese, Malays, Nagas, and Pacific Islanders. In some of the Polynesian Islands the tattoo is obviously copied from natural objects; thus, we are told that navigators found the Easter Islanders tattooed with figures of hogs, although the hog had become extinct locally years before. Even in New Zealand it is said that fern-leaves tattooed upon the back have been seen, although this must be a very rare case, as I have never been able to find any person but one who has seen such ornamentation.^† The common tattoo in New Zealand is highly conventional, and each part of the decoration is named and fixed. We see some faces with less tattooing than others, but, if the work has been properly done, it is all part of a constant scheme, and the only difference is in the stage arrived at when the work was discontinued. It has been said, however, that it was possible to know the tattooing of one face from that of another; if that is the truth, the tattooing

cannot have been on the conventional pattern, for one perfect moko is the exact likeness and copy of another. This refers only to the particular tattooing, in spirals, &c., with which we are generally acquainted; the face of a chief pourtrayed by Cook gives an entirely different set of markings; and, again, the mokokuri pictured by White^* shows a series of short straight lines, arranged in sets of threes, which are alternately horizontal and vertical. The difference between the decorations of one set of Pacific Islanders and the next, and even the different systems in vogue among the Maoris themselves, show that tattooing has probably had some common source, but has been so affected by an immense interval of time, and by the isolation of those practising it, that it is almost impossible to find out what the original form was. However, its form matters little compared with its signification, and I trust to be able to prove that its significance is unmistakable.

I have, in a former paper (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xx., p. 361), called attention to the fact that the common word for tattooing had meanings leading to the conjecture that tattooing was once a form of writing; and I have now to strengthen that conjecture by showing that every word used by the Polynesians for tattooing points backward to the same conclusion.

When Cook returned to Britain from the South Seas he enriched our language with a new word, or what was said to be a new word in European speech, viz., “tattow,” as applied to a pattern punctured on the skin. The word is Tahitian, and should be written tatau. It is a form of the word tau, and is one of the most common and widely spread of Polynesian vocables. Besides its general meaning, “to puncture markings on the skin,” ^† it appears also to apply to trading and numerical calculations. In Maori, it means “to count”; in Moriori, “to calculate”; in Samoan, “to count, to buy, to barter”: in Tahitian, “to count or number”; in Tongan, “to trade”; in Niue, “to count, to buy”; in Marquesan, “to count”; in Mangarevan, “to be counted,” &c.^‡

These words so widely distributed show at once that the tattoo was not a mere ornament; it was something that was of use in buying and selling—some mode in which accounts

could be kept. Had the meanings been confined to this sense they might have alluded to the very rudest methods of numbering—to the mere tally-stick cut with notches, or to some simple arrangement of the kind for pricking off or dotting down numbers. There is, however, still another set of meanings for tatau which implies a great deal more than this. The word means, in Maori, “to imitate, to copy, to search, to examine”; in Samoan, “to be alike, to equal, right, proper, fit, to read”; in Tongan, “resemblance, equal, similar, to criticize, to remark upon”; in Tahitian, “to invocate, to address in prayer”; in Marquesan, “to recite, to relate”; in Paumotuan, “to describe”; in Hawaiian, “to give publicity to a thing, to publish, to proclaim, the government of an island, clear, explicit in expression, to explain, to take counsel, to resolve in one's mind, to put down for remembrance, a writing-down of the names of those who have to pay tribute, to describe, to mark out, to promulgate as a law, to print or paint on native cloth as in former times, to dot, to write, to set down words on paper.”^*

It seems to me to be certain that the word in most common use for tattooing, even if its use for counting or trading was the marking of tally-sticks, must have meant infinitely more before it could be used as signifying “to publish, to proclaim, to set down for remembrance, to describe, to print or paint on cloth as in former times.” Compounds also of tau point in this direction, such as matau, which everywhere means “to know, to consider, to mark attentively,” and show that it was an intellectual effort which the tatau was calling forth. Had we but this word tau alone to depend on, the inference would be very strong that tattooing was once something very different from the representations of hogs or fern-leaves, or from the conventional curves of our Maori pattern.^†

We will now take up another word. Many of us have admired the beautiful carvings which adorn the canoes, houses, food-stores, &c., of the Maoris. They have been executed with rude tools, and appear grotesque in their primitive conception, but they are nevertheless possessed of a beauty of their own, not to be judged by the rules of Greek art, but to be regarded with admiration for their symmetry and bold intricacy of execution.

This carved work is called by the Maoris whaka-iro, a word which appears on the surface to have its radical meaning in iro, “a worm, or maggot”; whaka-iro would thus seem to mean “causing to appear worm-eaten.” Whether this is the original meaning we will inquire.

Although whaka-iro is now applied to carved work, we find that in old times it had a different meaning. In an ancient legend, to be found in Grey's “Polynesian Mythology”, (edition 1885, p. 112), we are told that when Ngatoro-i-rangi by his incantations raised the great tempest causing the mountainous sea in which Manaia and his army were drowned, the body of Manaia was washed ashore and was recognised by the tattoo-marks on one of his arms. The word for “tattoo” here used is whaka-iro.^* Let us trace it comparatively. We have in Maori (besides whaka-iro) whaka-iro-iro, “striped, variegated”; wheiro, “to be seen, to be understood”; whairo, “dimly seen, imperfectly understood.” The corresponding words in Polynesian mean—in Samoan, “to show, to make known, a mark or sign, to mark, to distinguish”; in Hawaiian, “to predict, to guess, to tell before-hand”; in Tongan, “to show, to find, to discern, knowledge, understanding, a sign, a mark, to discover, to reveal, to promise, to call to mind, to signify”; in Mangarevan the words mean “a sign, to mark”; in Mangaian, “to mark, to take notice”; in Paumotuan, “to mark, to stamp, to signal, a signal”; in Aniwan, “to know, to teach”; in Niue, “to know, to recognise, to find, to discourse, to make known, to explore.” In Futuna (Horne's Island), we also find that the god Ailoilo was the deity who stood at the gate of heaven to note all who passed in.^†

Here we have a word which, although used in New Zealand for “carved work,” once meant “to make known by a mark or sign, to reveal, wisdom, knowledge, to teach, to predict, to foretell,” &c. If we consider that it could not possibly have always been restricted to signify either wood-carving or the twisting of worms in decayed wood we have a clear example of decadence, and this view is borne out by a very remarkable coincidence. In an erudite paper by Professor Lacouperie on the pre-Chinese languages,^* we find that he has written as follows concerning one of the aboriginal tribes of China, dispossessed through the conquest of their country by the immigration of the present inhabitants: “The Li are reputed to have known the art of writing, which they seem to have forgotten. Captain J. Calder has found near Yu-lin-kan some characters scrawled on the walls of a temple, which I think may have belonged to the writing of Tsiampa. We know that several migrations from the latter country took place in the tenth century. In some parts of the island the Li women carry a piece of lacquered wood, on which are written several lines of a ballad; the writing, however, is like the wriggling of worms, and cannot be deciphered.” We have then, in this extract, a record of a parallel case to that of our own Maori word whakairo. I think that, if it is a similar case, it is a very pathetic cause for reflection. Here is an expression which signifies to make marks or signs which others can understand, and regard as the vehicle of wisdom and knowledge, by which they teach, communicate, and know beforehand; plainly, it is an inscribed character. Then it becomes used to signify making marks on the skin by which persons may be known or recognised; then, as the characters lose their interpreters, the word implies “dimly seen, imperfectly understood.” At last, the significance of the marks is quite lost, intelligence has gone out of them, and the word becomes merely a name for carved wood, or for the twisting of worms in rotten wood. Surely, a sad and pitiful history of a vanished culture and a lost civilisation.

We now come to some curious words, of which the meanings are obscure, but which are full of interest. The Maori word ta, “to tattoo,” is in its most common sense used as “to strike with a stick”; and as the tattooing-chisel (uhi) is tapped lightly but firmly in order to drive the points of the instru-

ment through the skin we see the connection between the senses of “tapping” and “tattooing.” We have also a word in Maori, paki, “to slap,” and we find that in Paumotuan the word means not only “to chastise,” but “to tattoo, tattooing, to describe, to write.” In Tahiti this word signifies “to mark the skin with the tattoo, to write, to recite a tale”; in Futuna, “to chisel, to print, to engrave”; in Hawaiian, “to smite with the hand, to stamp, to print, a printing as native cloth is printed, to strike a tax, to stir up one's feelings, to make a solemn promise, a vow, a line, a cluster, tied up, bound together, writing arranged in a row or line.”^* So that here, too, we have the word used for tattooing and writing, referring to the making of promises, describing, reciting, &c. The Maori word tongi means “a point, a dot or speck.” In Samoan it means “to carve, to engrave, the dot of an i, to mark off a portion of the tattoo, to appoint or decree the amount of a fine, the payment for labour or produce, to give a payment.” In Niue it means “to pay”; in Tongan, “to engrave, to carve, payment, wages, exchange”; in Futuna, “to peck as a fowl, to engrave, to make a mark, to exchange.”^† Again, we have a word which, signifying “to engrave, to tattoo,” also means “to decree, to give payment, wages, exchange,” just as the words we have previously examined have done. There is no possible connection between “a dot, to peck as a fowl,” &c., and the meaning of “a decree, payment, trade,” &c., except the bond shown by engraving in some literary character, pecked out, so as to be understood by those decreeing, paying, or trading.

Before leaving the subject of tongi, “the dot or speck pecked out,” it will be well to consider the Paumotuan tito, “to peck.” In Mangarevan this word means “to peck, a point, a dot”; in Marquesan, “joined, united, put close together”; in Hawaiian, “a small dot, point, or speck, a spot on the skin, the figure marked on the skin by tattooing, spotted, striped.”

So by this it would seem that the tito was not only tattooing, but that it was in stripes or dots united closely together. The corresponding Maori word has none of these meanings; it is boldly “to compose a romance, to invent a fable.” If there is any connection between the Maori and the other Polynesian meanings of tito, it must signify that rows of pecked-out dots or stripes were used in which to compose or preserve a narrative or fable, unless the allusion is to the lost art of writing as being itself a fable or romance of times passed out of mind.

We have seen that tongi and tito mean to peck or dot in stripes. Let us examine the Maori word (tuhi) now used for writing as we understand it. The modern word for printing is ta, once used for tattooing (so well has the genius of the language preserved the faithful unconscious record), but the word for handwriting is tuhi. Tuhi properly means “to stain, to paint, to delineate, to point out”; also, “part of the tattooing on the face.” ^* In Samoan it means “striped, to mark native cloth, to point out as a road.” In Tongan it signifies “striped”; in Marquesan, “to point out with the finger”; in Mangaian, “marked, inscribed”; in Futuna, “to point out, to make known.” In Hawaiian we again come upon the more refined meanings, “to show, to point out, to teach, to give an appellation, to reproach with a reminder of some former delinquency, to think, to imagine.”^†

It is hard to see how such meanings as “to teach, to think, to imagine, to remind of some former delinquency,” can be connected with tattooing and striped native cloth unless the stripes were lines of writing appealing to the intelligence.

I have only one more word to bring to your notice, and I was led to the discovery of its connection with this subject only because I have devoted some time lately to the study of Paumotuan. It is the Maori word nakonako, signifying “recollection, anxious thought.” The Paumotuan form gives the following meanings: “Like that, thus, a spot, a stain, striped, variegated,^‡ to tattoo, tattooing, to write.” The Tahitian means “the markings on the skin” (tatau). The Hawaiian signifies “a slight ripple on the water, the ridges of

narrow the avenue towards the west, where it was open to the light, and also towards the east, where it was closed in, and so the arches would seem to spring from about the same points in the horizon. The order of the colours in the inner and second arches being the same points also to this explanation, as this is also the case in halos. To account more in detail for the mode in which the appearances were produced under this very unusual combination of circumstances we must go back to the more ordinary phenomenon of halos, or circles of coloured and white light seen round the sun or moon when shining through thin frozen clouds.

The basis of the explanation is the fact that ice-crystals are hexagonal prisms, and that when light passes transversely through such a prism it is refracted, producing a spectrum of coloured rays, the mean angle of divergence of the emergent rays (i.e., the emergent angle of the yellow ray) being about 22° from the entering ray, if that entering ray strikes a face at angles between 35° and 55° from the perpendicular to the face. If the crystal be so turned that the entering ray is similarly inclined to the face on the other side of the perpendicular it emerges at the same mean angle of 22° in the opposite direction. As the successive perpendiculars to the faces of the crystal are inclined to one another at angles of 60°, it follows that, in a semi-revolution of a crystal on its major axis, during 100° of the revolution the parallel rays of light will have been refracted at this definite angle of 22° to one side or the other, while 80° will have been non-effective; or, which comes to the same thing, if a multitude of ice-crystals be placed at random in all possible positions in the path of the light, of those through which the light passes transversely, 55·5 per cent. will be effective in refracting the light in all directions, inclined at 22° to the incident ray. Hence, from each unit-volume of crystallized vapour (say, 1 cubic foot, or 1 cubic yard) a series of concentric cones of coloured light issue, the angle at the apex of the cone being always the same. If the light be proceeding from its source to the eye, passing through such a frozen cloud, it is evident that the conditions exist for the formation, in the eye of the observer, of a circular halo around the source of light, whether sun or moon; for such of those cones of coloured light as conform to the surfaces of similar imaginary concentric cones in the opposite direction, having their common apex in the observer's eye, are effective in producing in that eye the sense of concentric coloured rings of light at about 22° from the sun or moon.

Similarly, it may be shown that those ice-crystals which are so placed that the light passes through them obliquely, entering at a side and issuing at an end, or vice versâ, also

refract the light at a definite angle of about 46°, and thus a second coloured ring outside the first is perceived; and in both, the refraction being produced directly without internal reflection, the colours are arranged in the same sequence, red in side and blue outside.

The third circle of white light sometimes observed outside the other two coloured rings is probably produced by reflections from the surfaces of the ice-crystals without refraction by the light passing through them.

In the bows seen at Invercargill the axes of the cones of coloured or white light producing the appearances were at right-angles to the parallel rays of moonlight—not coincident with them, as in ordinary halos. The phenomenon was therefore, I conceive, caused by reflection previous to refraction—reflection from the inclined surfaces of myriads of ice-crystals, which happened to be in the right position to reflect the incident rays outwards from the walls of frozen mist; their reflected rays passing through other crystals, and being refracted in their transit through them, gave rise to the divergent coloured rays, which produced in the eye of the spectator the arches seen both to the north and to the south. I think that in this way the effect was produced; for, although by an interior reflection in a prism coloured rays would be projected backward towards the source of light, I have not been able to find any position of the prisms that would account for the symmetrical arches on the theory of internal reflection.

The reflection from the outer surfaces of other crystals would doubtless weaken the light; but, as compared with ordinary halos, in which the light which reaches the eye has passed completely through a cloud, and has undergone very numerous reflections and refractions in its transit, the Invercargill appearance would have the advantage that the light would have been reflected and refracted at the outer surface of the cloud, and so would have lost less by absorption and dispersion than in the more ordinary appearance of the circular halo round the sun or moon; and this would be the more true if, as I suppose, the clear avenue in which the spectator stood was V-shaped—wider at the western end towards the moon and narrowing towards the east.

The straight ray of white light tangential to the northern white bow at its west end, which appeared only for a short time, may have been due to a local current of air which turned the majority of the ice-crystals there in a direction which reflected the moonlight; but it is very much more probable that it was the result of some of those intricate effects of refraction and reflection which produce the reversed circles sometimes seen in connection with halos, and those phenomena

their sublimity. To the devoted workers of science nothing is too great or too small for their all-embracing scrutiny. Science deals equally with the infinite and the infinitesimal. The composition of far-distant suns and the life-history of the parasite of a parasite are equally the subjects of her investigation, and the results are such as cannot fail to appeal to any man who has a spark of intellect or imagination. A discourse on literature, on the other hand, deals with a subject with which all are more or less familiar, and so loses the advantage of novelty; it does not deal with concrete facts, but rather with opinions about facts, and so, as compared with the directness of science, it is apt to be somewhat vague and intangible; it is subjective rather than objective. To use the language of science, criticism must inevitably be qualitative only, and can never aspire to be quantitative. It can detect the presence of certain elements, but not accurately weigh or measure the proportions in which they exist.

At last it occurred to me, after I had examined and rejected many possible subjects, that in the noble singer whose death at the close of last year was regarded as a national calamity by all the English-speaking peoples I might find the starting-point for the retrospect which I desired. Further consideration led me to hope that by comparing and contrasting Tennyson and Browning I might be able, without making a mere enumeration of Victorian poets, to give a retrospective review of Victorian poetry. The magazines of late have been filled, and overfilled, with what one may call Tennysoniana—anecdotal accounts of the Laureate, written, some by intimate friends, others by Americans who had for once succeeded in intruding on his privacy at Freshwater, or by Englishmen who had once seen him at a railway-station. With these I have no desire to enter into competition. I shall rather aim this evening at examining Tennyson and Browning not as men, but rather as the living embodiments of certain aspects of poetry characteristic of the Victorian era, by discussing their methods, their objects, their ideals, and their views with regard to the great questions which are always present to the mind of man.

I have said the Victorian era of poetry, and I use the term advisedly. For the beginning of the reign of Victoria is practically coincident with the rise of certain tendencies in poetry. It is true that those tendencies have worked themselves out before the conclusion of the reign of the royal lady from whom the period takes its name, but none the less for fifty years were they coextensive with it. To use a paradox, poets are to a great extent at once the creation and the creators of their time, and from either point of view the term Victorian poets is not misapplied.

To appreciate the characteristics of the Victorian poets we must go back to a pre-Victorian period. The eighteenth-century poetry is on the whole vapid and insincere, tainted by an artificial classicism and conventionality. Nothing in English literature is more remarkable than the sudden and vigorous onslaught on this artificiality and insincerity which begins with the closing years of the eighteenth century. There came a return to nature and simplicity; the romantic era dawned once more, and what classic influence was still found was of the spirit and not of the letter. Then came the Lake school, with its great leader, Wordsworth, the contemplative interpreter of the poetry of nature, from whom none of her secrets were hidden; and the mysticism and melody of Coleridge; Scott, with his delight in mediæval chivalry, and that heroic verse that rings like the blare of a trumpet; the sensuous and romantic beauties of Keats; the ethereal raptures of Shelley; the fervid passion of Byron. By 1837 this brilliant band of poets had disappeared. Byron had perished of fever in Greece; Shelley was drowned in Italy; Keats was dead—not, certainly, “killed by the Quarterly,” according to the not-yet-exploded legend, but carried off by consumption; Scott had overtasked to his death even his magnificent powers; Coleridge, the wreck of his former self, had lived his last few years in an opium dream, and was already dead in 1834. Wordsworth, and Wordsworth alone, remained of a band of poets second in English literature to the Elizabethans only. But Wordsworth's work was done, though even then he had not attained full recognition. The poetry of the time had died away into magazine verse, which was called Byronic, and which, while reflecting his faults and weaknesses, omitted the passion and strength which had raised Byron himself to fame.

The kings of verse were dead. Was there any to succeed them?

In 1827 there had appeared a slight volume of verse entitled “Poems by Two Brothers,” graceful and pretty in their way, if somewhat imitative. Very few of the poems contained therein are to be found in any collection of Tennyson's poems—for one of those brothers was Alfred Tennyson, at the age of eighteen—nor did they attract much notice. Soon, in 1830, appeared another volume “Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.” Accustomed as we now are to nobler and grander music from the same lyre, such poems as “The Merman” and “The Owl,” “Claribel” and “Lilian,” may be read by us now without any great enthusiasm. They are evidently over-elaborate, too full of effort, and not devoid of affectation—the poems of a young man gifted with an eye for richness of colour and harmony of detail, but not yet skilled to give adequate expression to that which he saw clearly enough. And yet, slight as they

were, they were different from preceding work, and different not in degree but in kind. Whereas the earlier poets of the century had aimed at grand general effects, here was a young poet who aimed first of all at beauty of detail only, who, recognising that poetry was truly an art, was content first to apprentice himself in order to master the technical detail of his craft, and who, as Stedman says, “wrecked himself upon expression for the expression's sake.”

It is in the volume published in his twenty-fourth year that young Tennyson seems first definitely to feel his strength, and I do not think it is altogether by accident that in that little volume the first place is given to “The Lady of Shalott.” The Lady of Shalott dare not look upon life, but only upon the shadows of life reflected in her magic mirror; and now—

“I am half-sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.

She looks out upon the world as it is, and she dies in consequence. So with the young poet. He has hitherto dallied merely with the shadows of life, with dreams and fancies, which, for all their richness and beauty, were still nothing but dreams. He now looks forth upon the world as it is, and in doing so finds not a curse but a blessing. And if, in the same volume, he describes the land of the lotus-eaters where “slumber is more sweet than toil,” it is only resolutely to turn his face from it.

It is not my intention to trace Tennyson's poetic career by the milestones of his successive volumes. The “English Idylls,” “The Princess,” “In Memoriam”—to my mind his most characteristic work—lead up to his acceptance of the laureateship in 1850. It was then that, at the death of Wordsworth, he received, to use his own words, the

Laurel, greener from the brows
Of him that uttered nothing base.

Then, after “Maud,” comes the commencement of the “Idylls of the King,” that wonderful series of pictures which has been in hand in one way or another more than forty years, which began with the end, was continued with the beginning, and finished with the middle. They are like a series of stained-glass windows in some great cathedral, whose design the artist had in mind from the first; but in his execution he follows no order—he inserts one here and another there—and the people, while admiring the individual windows, are puzzled as to the general design. It is only when transpositions have been made, and the last two or three windows added in their proper places, that it is seen that they are not only beautiful individually, but now form an intelligible and connected series, noble in design, admirable in execution.

The rest of his works may be summed up as efforts, to my mind unavailing, on the part of Tennyson to prove that he possessed that dramatic power which his critics denied him.

The contrast which may be drawn between Browning and Tennyson on almost every point begins almost with their birth. Born as they were within three years of each other, the elder, Tennyson, was born and brought up at a quiet Lincolnshire parsonage. Browning, on the other hand, first saw the light in what was at that time a rural suburb of London—Camberwell—tolerably tranquil itself, but only some four miles distant from “streaming London's central roar.” As I have said, the first work really characteristic of Tennyson appeared in his twenty-fourth year. When Browning was of the same age there appeared his “Paracelsus”; and this, his first work, is as entirely characteristic of him as anything that he has written at any time since. For some time his work was cast in a dramatic mould. The somewhat commonplace “Strafford,” and that decidedly not commonplace, but chaotic and incomprehensible, “Sordello,” were followed by a series of less pretentious dramatic works, many of which are not without their charms. In fact, “Pippa passes” and “Colombe's Birthday” rise to a high level of literary excellence. It was in 1845 that Browning, disappointed with the reception of his dramas, bade farewell, for the time being, to the direct dramatic method. To that method he has never returned.

I said “to the direct dramatic method,” for in most of his later work the point of view is that of the dramatist, dealing, however, not with groups but with single figures. Fifty of these portraitures are contained in the “Men and Women”; “Dramatis Personæ” forms an addition, in number considerable but not great in value. It is by no means worth while to enumerate Browning's work after 1860. It contains much that is worthless, much that is singularly great, but nothing new in kind; from the beginning Browning is Browning, the most original and the most unequal of the poets of our century.

From this most inadequate sketch of the rise of the two leaders of the Victorian schools I now pass to that comparison and contrast of their art, their aims, their opinions, and their thoughts from which I hope to bring into prominence those features of Victorian poetry which seem to me most characteristic. More than a sketch I cannot attempt, but I hope that the broad outlines of the sketch will be sufficiently clear.

Assuredly there have never been two contemporary poets whom a critic might more fairly examine by the method of contrast than Tennyson and Browning. Throughout their

careers we find the most curious points of likeness and unlikeness Had some mighty genius, competent for the task, attempted to embody in the characters of two poets two opposite tendencies in art and thought, he might have drawn a Tennyson and a Browning. Like in their unlikeness, unlike in their likeness, the opposition in which they stand seems the work rather of art than of nature.

Examine briefly the career of each of them. Both have lived long, both chose the office and function of the poet above all others, both were poets pure and simple, neither of them writing or publishing a word of prose. And yet the contrasts are greater. Tennyson at once attained a recognition so full, a success so complete, that every successive work which did not surpass its predecessors was regarded as a failure. Browning, long without recognition, struggled to success by a series of failures. Browning began by writing dramas, but abandoned the dramatic method for portraiture. Tennyson began as a lyric and idyllic poet, but ended as a writer of drama. And yet with neither were the dramas written good stage-plays—successful, that is, upon the stage under ordinary conditions, without the glamour of a great name to aid them. For many years no one would have thought of comparing Browning with Tennyson except to the disparagement of the former; but in the last twenty years Browning's audience, “fit though few” at first, has grown rapidly, and, if Tennyson has the larger number on his side, Browning has the finer spirits. Tennyson is admired, Browning worshipped; the followers of the one form a school, of the other a cult. To whom posterity will assign the superiority I do not know, but this I am sure will form part of the verdict: that, if Tennyson was the finer artist, Browning was the more original thinker.

I spoke of Tennyson as the finer artist. We have now to contrast them from the point of view of art. For poetry is an art, not of “sentimental caterwauling” as Huxley once said, but of giving expression, in metrical form, to any thought having relation in any way to man, in such a way as to enhance its beauty. I pointed out a few minutes ago how Tennyson's early work arrested attention because of its artistic beauty of expression. In exquisite finish no poet in any literature has ever surpassed him. As an artist in metre he is supreme; more than that, his supremacy was at once accepted. The insipid sentimentalities of the Byronics disappeared at once, and the minor poets at once began to mould themselves upon Tennyson. Henceforth, with such a master to show them how it should be done, slipshod work was impossible.

If we open a volume of Tennyson, we can hardly help noticing how one form of poem predominates. “English

Idylls and other Poems,” “Idylls of the King,” actually bear the word “idyll” on their forefront; and others, like “Enoch Arden” and “Aylmer's Field,” are not less idyllic in tone. Throughout the greater part of his career Tennyson's most important work has been cast in the form of the idyll. What, then, is an idyll, and what is meant by an idyllic poet?

The word “idyll” in its origin means “picture,” and the idyllic style was discovered by Theocritus in the second century B.C. His “idylls” are little pictures of the joys and sorrows of country life, the life of the shepherd, the hunter, the fisherman. The idyll, then, is essentially pictorial and descriptive. It does not confess the deepest secrets of the individual soul like the lyric; nor, on the other hand, does it allow the character to depict itself in action—that is the function of the drama. The idyllic style stands outside that which it pourtrays. The idyllic and the dramatic schools in poetry stand in the same relation as the landscape and portrait schools in painting.

Now, there can be no doubt that in choosing this style Tennyson accurately recognised the limitation of his own powers. It was exactly suited to him in every respect. In thought his master was Wordsworth, in art principally Keats, though at the same time in his art he was eclectic, ranging over all times and all literatures, and selecting with admirable taste that which best suited him. The poetry of passion was for the time exhausted. Tennyson is the poet of repose and restraint, mastering his subject thoroughly and never allowing it to master him. In all his work he shows the perfection of proportion and good taste. With him there is not, as there is, for example, with Byron, any hurried work, any poem begun without any definite idea as to how it is to end. Every piece of work is filed and refiled, polished and repolished, until it stands flawless, smooth to the nail. At the same time this very perfection is a limited perfection. If Tennyson's restraint and repose prevent him from falling below the level, they also prevent him from rising above it. He lacks those glorious spontaneous outbursts which electrify us in Byron. I do not in any way blame Tennyson for not attempting to transcend the limitations imposed on him by temperament. He shows his intense feeling for art in not attempting what lay beyond him. At the same time a distinction must be made. A carved gem may be a more finished work of art than a noble statue, and yet there will remain no question as to which is the grander.

Let us now turn to the other side. I have just shown how Tennyson owed his first successes to his mastery of the technique of his art. In Browning we have a man who from the first was a rebel against form. The limitations imposed by

form in which others delighted were to him trammels and fetters. And therefore in his method he has shown himself not merely eccentric—eccentricity might be pardoned—but actually perverse. And this perversity will bring its own re-ward. To sin against a law of nature means destruction; to sin against a law of art means neglect, and to neglect a large portion of Browning's work is doomed. He possesses a mighty intellect, of a most original cast; he owes allegiance to none, and none can call themselves his sponsors in art. But he lacks that restraint which has made Tennyson's art what it is. He is mastered by his theme, and it runs away with him. In working out that theme, the thought grows and ramifies in his subtle intellect into infinite variety of detail, and not one detail will he spare us. And so he goes on involving one parenthesis in another, until we are wearied by the constant jerking of our attention from its proper track. This is one element in his undoubted obscurity. The other main element is due, I think, to his surprising alertness and quickness of thought. The problem which we might solve in five or six steps he completes in two, and is already off on another train of thought before we quite realise that the first is finished. Thus it is he offends in both ways: he is at times tediously garrulous upon nothings, at other times wearingly compressed and crabbed upon thoughts of the greatest import. Just that sense of proportion which is so eminently characteristic of Tennyson is entirely lacking in Browning. He insists upon neglecting the expression for the thought, not perceiving that it is the expression which gives, as it were, the stamp to the blank gold of the thought, and makes it once for all current coin. And yet he seems to have known this principle, but to have refused to apply it. If only he would have accepted for himself the words he addresses to another!—

Song's our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
Instead of draping them in sights and sounds.
* * * *
But here's your fault: grown men want thought, you think;
Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse:
Boys seek for images and melody,
Men must have reason: so you aim at men
Quite otherwise!

Thus it is, I think, that Browning is at his best in his smaller pieces, where the theme is naturally limited. Here his fine gifts show themselves to their best effect. And how fine his gifts are! Look at the fun and humour of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”; or the magnificent stride of “The Ride from Ghent to Aix”; the passionate pathos of “The Lost Leader,” or the sweet pathos of “Evelyn Hope.” What

lyric could be imagined more pure and serene and melodious than the last I have mentioned? This, at all events, is not written in that tooth-splintering jargon which disfigures so much of Browning's work, and of which it might well be said—as De Quincey said of Bowles's verse—that it ought to be boiled before it could be read. I have no hesitation in saying that the seven stanzas of “Evelyn Hope” are worth the whole 11,000 lines of the chaotic “Sordello.”

Tennyson, then, is a lyric and idyllic poet, the direct inheritor of Keats and Wordsworth. He proceeds by the pictorial method, making his scenery suggest or support the central idea. Browning is more original: starting for himself, he constitutes himself the poet of the soul of man. He is a psychologist, but working objectively. He has the art of piercing at once to the innermost soul, of arresting the master passions one by one, and forcing them to reveal themselves. Tennyson has to some extent tried the same method; but his “St. Simeon Stylites” and “Ulysses” and “Tithonus” seem to me, fine as they are, but thin analysis compared with Browning's robust and vigorous presentments. And this leads us to consider another ground on which both poets meet—the dramatic.

To my mind, neither of them has been successful in the drama proper. Both have failed, but not for the same reason. How should Tennyson work a real drama? Whence is to come, in his case, the knowledge of that mingling of action and passion which gives dramatic interest? All his years have been passed aloof from the storm and stress of life; his whole nature shrinks from them. His career has been easy and fortunate, his life retired. But a dramatist must know men as they are, not men as they are depicted in books. And therein alone, apart from temperament, Tennyson must have failed as a dramatist. As a matter of fact, he has carried the idyllic method on to the stage, and given us—as Stedman well says—a series of tableaux, or dramatic pictures, instead of dramatic action. His work is pleasant reading for the study, but not really adapted for the stage. The aid of a great actor, the dictates of fashion, the high reputation of the author, may enable his “Cup” or “Becket” to keep the stage for a time; none the less they are intrinsically failures, or, at all events, nothing more than a succès d'estime.

Browning, on the other hand, though in some of his finest work he pursues the dramatic method of embodiment of some great passion, which he makes to pourtray itself, yet fails in that portion of his work which is cast in the dramatic mould. He has the necessary knowledge of mankind—not Shakespeare himself had more piercing insight. Wherein, then, does he fail? In two points, as it seems to me: firstly, in that his

characters are creations of the intellect, instead of the sympathy of the artist; secondly, in that he cannot stand outside his characters—he cannot represent them objectively. Peasants and kings, old men and maidens, all are animated by Browning, and all, unhappily, are liable to speak Brown-ingese. With Shakespeare, one may say that Hamlet said this or that, or Othello said that but not that Shakespeare said either; but with Browning, whether the mask be Paracelsus or Pippa, it is Browning speaking through it.

There is one further point in which I desire to oppose Tennyson and Browning. I have discussed their art: now as to the materials of their art—their thought.

It is very evident that this is a question on which a volume of essays might be written. At the same time it is, I think, possible to put the fundamental differences between them into a few words. Tennyson would bring passion in all its forms under the rein of law. Browning would give the rein to passion. The one advocates control, the other free play. Of course, statements like these can be but half-truths only. They need a somewhat longer consideration.

In that volume of poems which I adduced as the first real representation of Tennyson, in the poem of “Œnone,” are the following words, which form the keynote of all Tennyson's poetry—

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power:
Yet not for power—power of herself
Would come uncalled-for—but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

That, as I said, seems to me to sum up the whole ethical position of Tennyson—“to live by law.” It crops up in various forms throughout the whole of his works. Thus we find it controlling his own art. His poetry is to have some moral restraint, not a merely sensuous passion for beauty—

—such as lurks
In some wild poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.

“Energy nobly controlled,” says Professor Dowden, speaking of Tennyson in this aspect, “energy nobly controlled, an ordered activity, delight his imagination. Violence, extravagance, immoderate force, the swerving from appointed ends, revolt—these are with Mr. Tennyson the supreme manifestations of evil.”

Thus it is in religion: to him God is the supreme lawgiver rather than the supreme friend; with ecstasy or mysticism he has no sympathy. When the Holy Grail descends,

and the Knights of the Round Table swear to follow it, Arthur, the kingly embodiment of law and order, upbraids them with following “wandering fires.” Their vows are sacred, they must go; yet how often now, instead of “laying the sudden heads of violence flat,” and splashing “the strong White Horse with his own heathen blood”—

This chance of noble deeds will come and go
Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires,
Lost in the quagmire.

It is the same in politics. England, the land of law and order,

Where freedom slowly broadens down
from precedent to precedent,
is always contrasted with
—the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt.

Look, too, at the close of “The Princess.” The passage is too long to quote, but the contrast between England and France is even more strongly put. So it is elsewhere. In the “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington” the characteristic of the dead hero especially insisted on is his submission to duty. For him

The path of duty was the way to glory.

On the other hand, with Browning it is not law but passion and aspiration which are supreme. Life is to have its full and free development. It is the main idea of his first work. Paracelsus aspires to the highest pleasure, the highest knowledge, and fails. But Browning constantly insists that he does not fail. So long as a man does nothing contrary to the law of his nature his failures in lofty aspirations may be and are higher and nobler than a meaner success. This principle is always present with Browning, and it will explain, I think, the difference between the art of Browning and Tennyson. It is now seen to be a fundamental difference of principle. Tennyson, restrained by law, feeling the laws and limitations of his temperament, will do nothing beyond them. Browning, not perhaps less aware of his limitations, will aspire gloriously, even if he fail, for his failure will also be glorious. Better a noble failure than a mean success.

That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it;
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.

To aim at a million and miss by a unit is better than to gain a hundred by adding one to one. So it is in art. With Browning,

He is all fault that hath no fault at all;