generation of the Arawa people, for dredging is gradually being abandoned. In olden days, however, the kakahi was very important. It was used in the feeding of motherless infants where a wet-nurse could not be secured. The kakahi was cooked and the child fed with the soft paru, or visceral mass, which, further softened with the water retained in the shell, could be sucked like milk. Three or four kakahi formed a meal. Hence the Maori said, Ko te kakahi te whaea o te tamaiti (The kakahi is the mother of the child). Ka whakangotea ki te wai o te kakahi (It was suckled on the juice of the takahi).

The kakahi was often greatly desired by patients. When the eyes took on a deathly, unnatural white appearance it was alluded to as kua whakawai kakahi nga kanohi (the eyes have taken on a kakahi white appearance). Then the appropriate treatment was to feed the patient with wai-kakahi—the juice of the kakahi after it had been cooked in a hot spring. Smith^* mentions these uses of the kakahi. If the patient could take it the prognosis was considered good. If the patient had been very ill and asked for kakahi it was looked upon as a good sign.

Kakahi were sometimes eaten raw. The opening of a raw kakahi has a special word, tioka. If a person desired raw kakahi for a meal he said, Tiokatia mai he kakahi (Open me some raw kakahi). If the kakahi were cooked, the word for opening was kowha. They might also be eaten underdone—that is, they were dipped into a hot spring for a few seconds. This just warmed the kakahi and caused the shell to open very slightly. This process was called whakakopupu. Hence the phrase Whakakopuputiamai he kakahi means, literally, “Underdo me some kakahi.”

There was, of course, the ordinary cooking, though the Maori never cooked their shell-fish until the shell was wide open and the contents shrivelled to the consistency of leather, as the European seems fond of doing.

The proper kinaki, or relish, to go with kakahi was the pohue, a kind of convolvulus. The kakahi after being eaten as food was always alluded to in the plural as nga kakahi.

The shell of the kakahi was used for cutting the hair of adults, and also the umbilical cord of a newborn child.

In addition to the proverb already mentioned, there is another drawn from the fact that the kakahi in moving about on the bottom of the lake forms a trail of curves and spirals not unlike tattooing or carving: Nga kakahi whakairo o Rotorua. This was applied to toa, or warriors, who dashed in and out of the war-party.

The kokopu and toitoi were eaten locally, and not preserved. The inanga and koura, on the other hand, were preserved, and, besides providing for local needs, were sent as presents and exchanges to outside tribes.

The inanga were dried by being spread out on the papa or rocky slabs rendered hot by the natural hot steam below. When dried they were called whakahunga, and were packed in baskets lined and covered with fern-leaves, and were then ready for storing or export.

The koura makes delicious eating, the flavour resembling that of large prawns. It has survived the introduction of trout better than its finny comrades, and to this day the tau koura still obtains good catches, though not comparable to those of times gone by. Curried koura is often included in the menu of the dining-room run in connection with the dances in the carved meeting-house of Tama-te-kapua at Ohinemutu; and during the