rows of piles, generally in regular order, were driven at short distances from each other, the heads being brought to a general level with the outer boundary. Upon these piles a rough platform was constructed, often consisting of one or two layers of unbarked beams lying parallel to one another. Upon this platform rude houses were erected, the extent of the platform and the number of houses being of course regulated by the number of persons of which the settlement was composed. That portion of the platform which was within the area of each house was covered with clay mixed with gravel, firmly beaten down to form an even floor, and each house had a proper cooking-hearth. The houses appear to have been rectangular in form, their sides consisting of wattle and daub, and the roof thatched with straw or rushes. These platforms were always at some distance from the shore, with which they were connected by narrow bridges, formed also on piles. Whether the footways of these bridges were movable does not appear; but it is probable that this was the case, in order to prevent surprise on the part of an enemy desirous of attacking the settlement from the landward. It appears that all the refuse from these dwellings was thrown into the water below, through openings left in the platform for that purpose. The general conditions under which the earlier of these people appear to have lived is the more especially interesting to us, because, singularly enough, it is to the condition of the aboriginal New Zealanders, as described by Cook, that Dr. Keller compares the degree of civilization to which the inhabitants of the settlement of Meilen had apparently attained, as indicated by the remains discovered. After extracting from "Hawkesworth's Voyages," Vol. III., page 395, a full account of the habits of life of the New Zealanders as there given, he proceeds to show the close resemblance to that account which is indicated by the remains found at Meilen and many other of the more ancient lake settlements. He then tells us, in regard to their domestic economy, (with reference particularly to the supply of vegetable food,) that in (very lake-dwelling were to be found stones for bruising and grinding grain, or what are called corn-crushers and mealing stones; that the very grain itself has been found at Meilen, Moosseedorf, and Wangen, nay, even the very loaves or cakes in their original form; and that we must therefore recognize the colonists as agriculturists, and see them advanced to that grade of civilization in which men have permanent abodes, and have secured for themselves some degree of social order. He remarks that the tilling of the ground must have been simple in the highest degree, and have consisted merely in tearing it up by means of inefficient tools made of stags' horns or crooked branches of trees, as is still done by some of the North American Indians, and was formerly done (as regards crooked pieces of wood and other rude implements) by the Maoris; but he points out, nevertheless, that the products obtained from this rude cultivation were generally excellent a fact known to ourselves as regards the Maoris-because, as a rule, they always used rich virgin soil, or soil that had long lain fallow, for growing their crops in. Dr. Keller refers us to a treatise by Professor Heer on the plants used by the Lake-dwellers, for information as to their husbandry, and it is from that treatise, and from the investigations of Alphonse de Candolle and others, that I have prepared the following résumé of the subject. The remains of plants, from which Professor Heer drew his conclusions, were found lying in the lake mud below the sites of the various settlements, or buried under peat, several feet thick, formed since the settlements ceased to exist. They were found mixed with stones, fragments of pottery, domestic instruments, charcoal, ashes, and other unmistakable evidences of human occupation, and consisted of remains of cereals, of weeds usually associated with cornfields, of culinary vegetables, of fruits and berries, of nuts, of oil-producing and aromatic plants, of bast and fibrous plants, of plants used for dyeing, of mosses and ferns, of fungi for kindling fire, and of water and marsh plants. Of the plants used for food the cereals were evidently the most important, and consisted of a now extinct form of wheat called the "lake-dwelling wheat," and of a small-grained six-rowed barley, also extinct; whilst the spelt (which at present is one of the most important cereals,) and the oat did not appear until the Bronze age, and rye was entirely unknown. With the exception of a pea no culinary vegetable can certainly be mentioned as belonging to this period, but a small bean and a field lentil appear during the Bronze period. As to fruits, they appear to have been possessed of an abundance of crab apples, and in the later periods of a larger but still inferior species of apple, which may have been the result of cultivation; of a small and inferior description of pear, found associated with the relics of the Bronze period; of a plum closely allied to the bullace; of sloes, bird cherries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries, whilst it seems that they also used the fruits of the dog-rose and elder. Beech nuts were found in large quantities, and cakes, of the seed of the garden or field-poppy and carraway seeds, occurred amongst the remains of some of the more recent settlements. Heer and de Candolle both remark that the Lake-dwellers could not have had any close connection with the people of Eastern Europe, otherwise they would, without doubt, have cultivated rye, and that the plants actually cultivated show that their chief intercourse must have been with the people of the Mediterranean basin. Every species of corn which they used had certainly come from that quarter, for it was identical with those cultivated in Southern Italy, whilst the millets were similar to those cultivated in Egypt. In connection with the character of the vegetation under notice, Professor Heer points out that it affords some clue to the determination of the age of the lake-dwellings, and by means of this and other evidence bearing on the question, he came to the conclusion that, whilst the most recent of those dwellings, namely those of the Bronze period, might be not less. than 2,000 years old, the oldest might date back for thousands of years before the commencement of the Christian era. He also points out that those remains, which unquestionably have a very high antiquity, throw some light on the solution of the question whether the species of plants have undergone any change in historic time. As regards the wild plants he answers the question in the negative, (a conclusion concurred in by the late Mr. Darwin, for reasons given in detail in his work hereafter referred to,) but finds that the case is different with the cultivated plants, for that the greater number of those agree with no recent forms sufficiently to allow of their being classed together. He tells us that the small Celtic bean, the pea, the small lake-dwelling barley, the Egyptian and the small lakedwelling wheat, and the two-rowed wheat or emmer, form peculiar and apparently extinct races, and he adds that man must, therefore, in course of time, have produced sorts which gave a more abundant yield, and have gradually supplanted the old varieties. Mr. Darwin sums up the investigations of Heer and others in passages which are to be found at pages 318 and 319 of the first volume of his great work on "Animals and Plants under Domestication," a work which, by the way, ought to be closely studied by every breeder of animals and cultivator of the soil. From all this it will be seen that the great advance in civilization exhibited by even the earlier Neolithic over the latest Paleolithic inhabitants of Western Europe, may be assigned chiefly to their possession of an abundant supply of vegetable food, suitable, not only for man, but also for the maintenance of domesticated animals, of which, as Professor Rütemeyer of Basle tells us, they possessed several species. I do not propose to deal with the long period which has intervened between the occupation of the lake-dwellings and the present time, which pertains entirely to the historic period, not only because it would stretch this paper to an inconvenient length, but because we shall be able more clearly and highly to appreciate the advance made in the character of our vegetable food during this interval, by a comparison of the inferior species possessed by even the later inhabitants of the lake-dwellings, with the rich produce now found in the cultivated fields and gardens of Western Europe. This is vividly brought to our notice if we compare the list given by Heer of the vegetable foods used by the Lake-dwellers, with any well prepared gardener's catalogue of the fruits and vegetables now available for food, a comparison which cannot fail to satisfy us how much civilized man has already benefited, and may further expect to benefit, by the application of the principle of selection to the variability so especially characteristic of vegetable life, which has been so admirably discussed by Mr. Darwin in the work above referred to. ART. IV.-The Building Timbers of Auckland. [Read before the Auckland Institute, 30th November, 1885.] KAURI.-Four specimens: Red, white, black, and a soft kind from Tairua. Piece of kauri destroyed by grubs. Piece of window-sill from St. Andrew's Church, built in 1847. RIMU.-Piece of 12 in. x 3 in. board, to show the difficulty in discriminating between sap and heart. TOTARA.-Piece with the commencement of small spots of decay. THERE are only four kinds of New Zealand timbers used in Auckland for building purposes. I place them in the following order of merit Kauri, rimu, totara, and last kahikatea. After touching on these various timbers, I propose to say a few words on seasoning and decay of timber. Permit me to remark that the statements are not gathered from hearsay, but from thirty years' experience in the building trade in Auckland. I have of late years taken down buildings that I either took part in erecting or saw erected; I have had, therefore, many opportunities of studying the durability and other characteristics of our Auckland-grown timbers. First, the kauri (Dammara australis).-I have here specimens of four kinds of kauri: the red, white, black, and a soft kind, quite distinct in grain and quality from the others, which I will hereafter explain. The red kauri is the best general building timber; it is well adapted for heavy framework, beams, joists, and the like; it is close-grained, rather gummy, very durable, but is liable to cast and twist; it shrinks endways as well as in width. The shrinking endways is a great drawback. to kauri, and more especially this kind. I have known a forty feet beam shrink 1 inches in length. I have also known a weatherboard shrink of an inch in twenty feet, and most of us will remember ceiling mouldings and other joiners' work shrinking so as to quite disfigure the building. This red kauri should only be used for beams or other framework, and not for mouldings or joiners' work. The next is the white kauri, a tough kind of timber; will bear a greater breaking strain than the red, but not so durable; I have seen it quite soft in a few years; it is a splendid timber for moulding and joiners' work. The shrinking endways is almost nil, if worked up after a fair amount of seasoning, neither will it cast. It is largely used by boat-builders on account of its readiness to bend. Black kauri is not very abundant, it comes from the west coast of the island, it is only fit for rough work, is heavy with gum, and the most durable of all; in fact, for fencing-posts or the like, I believe it would last as long as puriri. I need hardly say it is not fit for mouldings or joiners' work; it is so hard it would require very strong machinery to work it, and after being worked it would cast into all shapes. The last specimen of kauri (No. 4) is the timber for joiners' work and mouldings; there is a peculiar grain marking in this kind of kauri not to be found in any of the other specimens-this kind should only be used for mouldings and joiners' work. We have often heard it remarked that kauri is noted for its casting, twisting, and shrinking: well, this last kind of kauri will neither cast, twist, nor shrink endways. I have seen slight scantlings, say 8 in. by 8 in., 20 feet long, quite straight, after being exposed to the weather without any care. I have seen joiners' work made up out of this timber standing as well as cedar. I have already said it should only be used for joiners' work and mouldings, it is so light and soft; it should never be used for beams or heavy framework; but if this kind of kauri and the white only were used for joiners' work and mouldings, we should seldom hear of ruined ceilings, and twisted doors and sashes. This kind of kauri is only found in the Tairua District. The next timber on my list is the rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum). It is known in the South Island as red pine. The rimu, I believe, grows in the South to a very large tree, but in this province the average size tree is two feet six inches to three feet diameter; it is a timber with a large proportion of sapwood-a two-feet diameter log will have nine inches of sapwood, leaving only six inches of heart, the heart not being very well defined. By this specimen of rimu (a board twelve inches wide) the difficulty in discriminating between sap and heart will be seen, even by an expert. There is a hard white gum, and frequently many shakes, near the heart, that renders this tree unfit for boards, but it answers well for scantlings, joists, and framework. The sap-wood, if exposed to weather or damp, will not last, but the heart is very durable. I have known rimu fences standing many years. Of course, with kauri so plentiful, we have not used much rimu; but at the rate the kauri is being cut, before many years we shall, I am sure, have to fall back on |