• £J he u- e Rre woven or P' aifed f rom that un sightly object, the wiid flax (phormium tmax), winch grows iu each profusion all over New Zealaua, au article which the European of the present day with all his appliances of machinery and skilled workmen, has scarcely been able So adapt to similar uses, for it is only Tery lately that this rateable plant has St 8 marketßble and manufacturing com- Bat the early Maori, of whom we speak, knows every art of his race. Without saw ousel, imils or other tool, except such rnae implements as a greenstone or flint hatcuet, acd a wooden mallet (for iron was not introduced until Cook's time), he builds his own house, and his own canoe, both splendid specimens of workmanship, and often ornamented in snoh a manner as to excite the wonder and afaniration of civilised nations; he makes bis own nets, lines, ard snares of flax to suit every bird, traps for rats, fish hooks of mutton fish shell and ivory, needles of the bones of birds, and weapons of offanoe and defenoe of stone or wo.jd, fabricates his own gar ments, and oarves his own ornaments of ivory »nd green jade, sawing the former with the serrated edge of the mussel, and cutting the latter with a pieoe of the same stone, or one of the sharp flints ground to an edge keen as a razor by the westerly winds blowing the fine sand over it for ages. He knows the habitat of every bird in the air, of every fish in the water, of every plant in the earth. H e can hunt, fish, fight, can produoe fire by fnotion, even in that moist climate; he is a warrior, an orator, and a farmer, for iua land is tilled most carefully, and in bis garden, his taro ground, big kumera patch, all is order and regularity, not a weed to be seen. Perhaps no more oojioluslve evidence of the original settlers having migrated from

one or other of the islands of the Polynesian group, whether Hawaiki or not, is immaterial in this case, is the fact of their being under the terrorising influence of that most extra ordinary system known as " Tapn," a system known and practised all oyer the region referred to. 