bleeding head, cracked skull, or barked skin, as the case might be.

As by the genealogy of the Morioris they have existed twenty-seven or twenty-eight generations on the island, it must have been a very long time ago that by that law of their ancestor Numuku all weapons such as okewas, taos (or spears), &c., were laid aside, the latter being placed on rests at their sacred places of sepulture. Tuahu were only produced on the occasion of " tohinga tamariki," a sort of baptismal ceremony; hence the making of okewas fell into desuetude, and that of any other warlike weapons known to their ancestors.

Concerning the stone implements used by the Maoris and their ancestors, I have already stated that they called all those made of nephrite (greenstone) 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 with those of the Maoris.

One of these, found during the draining of an extensive swamp at the Hinds, and presented to the Canterbury Museum by Mr. E. H. Dobson, is roughly made of greyish dolerite rock. It is 13 inches long, 3 inches broad, and 14 inches thick in the centre. It has a resemblance to the okera of the Morioris, in so far that only one side (different from the form of the mere) has been prepared for striking by being brought to a sharp edge, and that it has no hole through the handle for the purpose of passing a strap to be fastened to the wrist. The handle is also of a very primitive character. The process pursued in its manufacture appears to me identical with that of the Morioris, the implement being first chipped and afterwards roughly ground down, though at one spot an attempt has been made to give it a more perfect polish. This is the only weapon of the kind, viz., possessing a striking edge on one side only, that I have ever seen in New Zealand; and the position of the swamp, of enormous extent, is such that it may have been deposited therein during many generations past.

Another stone implement of very great interest to the ethnologist is one that was lately presented to the Canterbury Museum by Dr. de Lautour of Oamaru. It was obtained in deep ploughing at Windermere, on the Kakanui River, near Maheno, Oamaru. It is made of a similar micaceous schist to that of which the okewa (No. 1) of the Morioris is manufactured,

a schist which is a not uncommon rock in New Zealand. At the first glance we are struck not only by the peculiar form but also by the mode of manufacture, as it has been rubbed down in the same manner, and has thus the same somewhat flaky appearance, as the Chatham Islands weapons. What distinguishes it from the form of the mere are the prominent points above the handle, so that in this respect it resembles the weapon No. 3 from the Chatham Islands. Similar prominences also occur below the handle. Here a hole has been bored for the passing of a wrist-fastener. However, the whole weapon is very imperfect as to form and workmanship, and may also date back to a time when the manufacture of these weapons was in its infancy. The following are the dimensions of this remarkable stone weapon: Total length, 14 inches; greatest breadth, 3 inches; at prominent points above handle, 3 inches; greatest thickness, 1 inches.

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.

ART. III.-Notes on the Difference in Food Plants now used by Civilized Man as compared with those used in Prehistoric Times. By W. T. L. TRAVERS, F.L.S.

[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 29th July, 1885.] THERE has been a good deal of learned discussion as to whether man was originally destined for a vegetarian or not, but however interesting this question may be in connection with his descent, it is one of no importance now in relation to his food, because his existing structure not only enables, but practically requires, him to extend his choice, in that respect, to the animal as well as to the vegetable kingdom. And he can, as a rule, do this with especial advantage, for by using a mixed diet he not only economises physiological labour, but also saves his excretory organs from a large amount of profitless work which would otherwise be thrown upon them.

But although a choice of food is thus given to him, the varying circumstances under which he exists on earth, determine, to a considerable extent, the direction in which that choice should be made. Within the tropics, for example, where any large consumption of flesh food would inevitably produce injurious

results, man is almost exclusively frugiverous, drawing nearly all he requires for food, as well as for shelter and clothing, from the plants which spring up in profusion around him. On the other hand, in the inhospitable circumpolar regions, (although the Esquimaux eats with relish the half-digested moss which he finds in the stomach of the reindeer,) he is compelled to counteract the rigour of the climate by a large consumption of flesh food, and especially of such as is rich in carbon.

We find, however, that independently of mere climatal considerations, in localities in which the conditions are such as to admit of vigorous plant growth, the extent to which man carries the utilisation of plant life for food and otherwise varies much, but that it certainly increases in direct ratio with his ascent in the scale of civilization; and it is my chief object in this paper to show the progress which has taken place in plant cultivation, during the gradual rise of man in civilization in those parts of Western Europe in which that subject has been investigated: because, in the first place, it is from thence that we have obtained the greater part of the plants, whether used for food or otherwise, which are cultivated amongst us; and because, in the next place, the climatal conditions which now obtain there bear a close resemblance to those of our Islands.

The earliest rude inhabitants of Western Europe of whom any traces have been discovered, are known as Paleolithic men. Their remains are usually found in caves and rock-shelters, associated with those of many animals now extinct, amongst which were the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the reindeer, the stag, the lion, the hyæna, and the bear. Remote, however, as the period is from the present time, during which the earlier races of these ancient men existed, the remains left behind them and by their successors of that age, in the caves and rock-shelters which they inhabited, give, to use the words of Mr. Boyd Dawkins, "as vivid a picture of the human life of the period, as that revealed of Italian life in the first century by the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum." These old floors of human occupation contain broken bones of animals killed in the chase, mingled with rude implements, weapons of bone and unpolished stone, and charcoal and burnt stones, which indicate the position of their hearths. And not alone do these remains point to the co-existence of man with the extinct mammalia to which I have referred, but they also afford clear evidence of the climatal conditions which obtained during the different portions of the Paleolithic period, and a clue to the characteristics of the race to which the men belonged. Mr. Boyd Dawkins, in speaking of later Paleolithic times, tells us that, in the caves which yield evidences of man's occupation, flakes without number, rude stone-cutters, awls, lance-heads, hammers, saws made of

flint or of chert, rest pêle-mêle with bone needles, sculptured reindeer antlers, engraved stones, arrow-heads, harpoons and pointed bones, and with the broken remains of the animals which had been used as food-the reindeer, bison, horse, the ibex, the saiga antelope, and the musk sheep. In some cases the whole is compacted, by a calcareous cement, into a hard mass, fragments of which are to be seen in the principal museums of Europe. This strange accumulation of débris marks, beyond all doubt, the place where ancient hunters had feasted, and the broken bones and implements are merely the refuse cast aside. The reindeer formed by far the larger portion of the food, and must have lived in enormous herds in the centre of France. The severity of the climate at that time may be inferred by the presence of this animal, as well as by the accumulation of bones in the spots on which man had fixed his habitation. Indeed, had this not been the case, the decomposition of so much animal matter would have rendered the place uninhabitable even by the lowest savage."

These facts do indeed afford a vivid picture of the life conditions under which man existed at a time unquestionably separated from the present age by countless centuries, and that too, in parts of Europe which now sustain a rich and varied vegetation, and in which, except the horse, all the animals above referred to are now extinct and are replaced by herds of domesticated oxen and deer, by flocks of sheep and goats, and by numerous other animals maintained either for their profit or for their beauty.

It must be manifest that during this earlier period the human inhabitants could have derived as little of their nutriment from vegetable substances, as do the Esquimaux and Samoyeds of the present day, and that it is more than probable they devoured, with the same greedy relish as the former, the partly digested matter found in the stomachs of the ruminants upon the flesh of which they chiefly subsisted. Had they possessed any of the vegetable foods which, as we shall find in the sequel, were abundantly consumed by the Neolithic men by whom they were succeeded, some remnants of such food would unquestionably have been discovered amongst the debris of their feasts, by the scientific observers who so fully and closely examined those débris; and the complete absence of any such remnants, not only justifies us in assuming that they did not possess foods of the kinds referred to, but also serves to strengthen the view expressed above as to the nature of the contemporaneous climatal conditions.

A great advance in the vegetable food available for man in Western Europe is found to have taken place in Neolithic times. We have no means of estimating the length of the interval which separated even the later Paleolithic from that part of the Neolithic period to which I am about to refer, but the geological evidence alone indicates that it must have been enormous, that

evidence being supported by the fact that an extraordinary im. provement had taken place in the climatal, and, indeed, in the physical conditions generally of the district in question, as indicated by the almost universal presence within it of an abundant and varied vegetation, and of a fauna analogous to that which now exists.

Our chief positive knowledge of the vegetable food resources of the Neolithic people of Western Europe has resulted from the discovery, made about thirty years ago, of the remains of the Swiss lake-dwellings, which led to those interesting investigations which have been recorded in the great work of Dr. Ferdinand Keller, President of the Antiquarian Society of Zurich.

This discovery was first brought under the notice of the Society at Zurich by Dr. Aeppli, of Ober Meilen, who reported that remains of human industry, likely to throw unexpected light on the primæval history of the earlier inhabitants of the country, had been brought to light, owing to the occurrence in the early part of that year of an unexampled drought, accompanied with such severe cold that the rivers were practically dried up. The result of this drought was to lower the water of the lake to such an extent, at a place where some reclamation works were going on, as to enable the workmen to excavate the land upon the shore immediately in front of their retaining wall, to a considerable depth below the ordinary water level. In making these excavations they found the heads of old piles in sitû, and great numbers of stags' bones, mixed with implements and other relics of human occupation. This led to further investigations on the spot, and to similar investigations in other places, which were followed by the discovery of a large number of the settlements now known as lake-dwellings, and to the general results so elaborately detailed in Dr. Keller's great work. Great interest was at once excited amongst scientific inquirers throughout Europe, more especially as the very first settlement which was examined, namely, that of Meilen, was found to belong almost exclusively to the Neolithic age, for, with the exception of two metal objects, all the antiquities obtained there consisted of bone, iron, wood, stone or earthenware. In order that you may understand the conditions under which these antiquities have been so long preserved, I will endeavour to give you, as shortly as I can, an idea of the general structure of the lake-dwellings.

The settlement of which any assemblage of dwellings was composed was usually formed in a shallow part of the lake on the borders of which it was established. At a short distance from the shore a rectangular space was enclosed by a row of strong piles, which were often covered on the outside with wattling or hurdle work, intended either to lessen the splash of the water or to prevent injury to the piles by the impact of floating wood or of the canoes of the people. Within the inclosure thus formed,