the occasion of a hakari, or harvest festival, accompanied by religious rites; but of these I have been unable to learn any details.

The storing of the crop required the greatest care and judgment, as, in spite of every precaution, it was barely possible to preserve the stock until the next planting - time. Besides being a delicate article to handle, the kumara is susceptible to every change of weather. A single bruised or chafed tuber will soon rot and communicate the decay to those in contact with it, while a very short exposure to damp, or even to cold air, will quickly spoil the whole lot.

In constructing their storing-places the Maoris followed no uniform fixed pattern. As was usual with them, the idea they had in their minds was worked out subject to local conditions, and, as these varied more or less in every locality, it is not surprising to find a corresponding variety in their appliances.

The chief question being the exclusion of damp and the maintenance of a moderate and even temperature, the object, was very simply attained in a dry porous soil by the rua. This was a circular pit sunk in the ground 5 ft. or 6 ft. deep and about the same in diameter, narrowing in at the top and closed by a trap-door made of a wooden slab. The kumara were handed down to a person standing in the middle, and were piled radially round the sides on a bed of soft fern or Lycopodium (waewaekoukou), a layer of the same material being placed between them and the wall. If sufficient accommodation were available only one pile was made, as they kept better if not packed in too large a mass. The enormous number of these ruas on the volcanic plains of Taranaki and elsewhere shows the extent of former plantations. They are called “Maori-holes” by the settlers; and before the country was thoroughly reclaimed they caused the loss of a good many horses and cattle, as, being frequently covered over with tangled fern, they were not generally discovered until a beast had fallen through.

In situations where the soil was not sufficiently porous to allow the rua to be self-drained it was built partly above ground, generally on the slope of a hill. The pit was dug 2 ft. or 3 ft. deep, and of an area proportionate to the quantity of kumara to be stored. An outfall drain was made from the bottom, and a surface channel round the top carried off the storm-water. A roof was made over the pit, the rafters, being set in the ground at an angle of about 30 degrees, and covered with sticks and fern, on which was piled a thick layer of earth, and the whole was coated with fronds of nikau to preserve the earth from the wash of the rain. The entrance was made in the outfall drain, and was closed with a moveable wooden slab or sliding door.

Very frequently, however, the storing-place was entirely above ground. A small house was built with the walls about 4 ft. or 5 ft. high. These were framed of dressed slabs set vertically in the ground, with battens lashed on horizontally at intervals of a few inches, and covered over with two or three thicknesses of raupo so as to be completely airtight. Mangemange, a kind of climbing fern, or sheets of totara-bark protected the lower part of the walls, and against this the earth was thrown up from a ditch sunk below the floor-level, which acted as a drain for the building. The roof was framed in a similar manner to the walls, and also covered with raupo—sometimes with an inner sheeting of totara-bark—while an upper layer of toetoe-grass, secured by ropes of mangemange or wooden battens, preserved the raupo from the wet. A door was generally placed at each end, so that in order to prevent the wind from blowing in the house could always be entered to leeward; and the opening was made just large enough to allow a person to creep in on all-fours. This class of storehouse was always a conspicuous and picturesque object. They were often ornamented with elaborate carvings, inlaid with pawa-shell (Haliotis), and finished off with a teko-teko (grotesque wooden figure) set up at the apex of the roof.

Sometimes the storehouse was set up on legs 3 ft. or 4 ft. high, when it was called a pataka, and as the imported rat found its way into the settlements precaution had to be taken against its incursions by socketing the tops of the legs into heavy cross-pieces of timber hollowed out like sections of an inverted canoe. A very fine specimen of the pataka is to be seen in the Auckland Museum.

When only a small quantity of kumara had to be dealt with a very simple device, called the “whakatoke,” was sometimes adopted. A shallow circular depression made in the ground was covered with a layer of long stalks of the common fern (Pterıs aquılına), with the roots meeting at the centre and the heads radiating outwards. On this were piled about half a dozen kits (flax baskets) of kumara. The heads of the fern were then bent upwards and inwards so as to enclose the lot, and were tied together over the top. The whole was then covered with toetoe-grass, and a layer of earth was thrown up from a trench round the outside.

There were other modes of storing which were variations or adaptations of those mentioned, in all of which the Maoris were guided by local circumstances. Sometimes the pit was made inside a large shed, and sometimes it was driven horizontally into the face of a steep bank. Occasionally the tubers were placed on a raised platform (whata) and covered with mats and fronds of nikau, while in some rare instances the storehouse was built in the forked branches of a tree.^*