CONCLUSION.

We have described the technique of Maori clothing from the simple kilt to the complex dress-cloak with taniko borders. From a careful study of that technique with its details, we have endeavoured to follow the order of its evolution. We have sat beside Maori craftswomen and watched deft fingers separating the weft elements, placing the warp between and pulling the weft stroke home with a click. We have gone from village to village of the surviving experts and, on a sampler, been taught the intricacies of the neck bands and the complications of the taniko. Details and processes that might have been curtailed to more able ethnologists of another race, have been freely and patiently imparted to a kinsman. Saturated with a Maori atmosphere and environment, one could almost feel and share the mental processes of successive generations of craftswomen as they groped after the solution of the various problems in technical detail that assailed them during the evolution of the craft. The details in actual technique were given by Maori experts and are correct. The deductions are the author's, and, if they are wrong, the mistakes are his

own.

In endeavouring to follow the evolution of Maori clothing technique, we have been influenced and guided by three things. Firstly, the simplest technique is found in the simplest garments. The crude combined rain tag and warp is found in the most primitive type of cape used for the roughest purposes. The single-pair twine, the thrum commencement, and the braid finish. are shared by it with the improved rain-cape and rain-cloak. In the dress-cloaks, in addition to more care in the preparation of material, finer warps and closer weft rows, a more complicated technique is used, such as the two-pair weft, the selvedge commencement, and the more complicated neck bands. Ornamentation progressively improves.

Secondly, the order of complexity in technique coincides with what we regard as the order in which the need for the various garments occurred during the period that the Maori was perfecting the clothing craft; kilts, rain capes, rain-cloaks, dress-cloaks, protective garments, and still more decorative dress garments.

Lastly, the use for particular garments did not cease when a superior garment with an improved technique was

evolved. The Maori was not unduly conservative, but he seems to have been happy in having evolved a variety of technique appropriate to the particular order of his needs. The needs he experienced during the evolution of the craft remained the needs that had to be satisfied after the perfection of his technique. Improved technique did not lead to the abandonment of the simpler technique of the rougher garments, but added a richer variety to his forms of clothing. Thus the various forms of garments, with their particular technique remained in use to point the way down. which his inventive genius had travelled since his ancestors cut off the sea-roads to Hawaiki,

Our Polynesian material has been meagre. From such as we had, we have concluded that the use of the spaced single-pair twine was brought to New Zealand from Eastern Polynesia. Its more extended use in the rain-cape and raincloak and in close twined work was stimulated by local conditions. The fixation of the rain tags in the Rapa cape would seem to be a case of independent evolution created by needs similar to those of the Maori. The fact that there was apparently no such garment in the Society and Cook Groups would show that there was no need for such a technique in the area from which the Maori ancestors came. At the same time, owing to the closer relationship between Maori and the dialects to the east of Tahiti, we must not overlook the possibility that the peoples now occupying remote areas such as Rapa and New Zealand may have been in very close connection in the Society Group before they were displaced by the ancestors of those who now occupy what was the original distributing centre of the Eastern Polynesians. Such a hypothesis would account for resemblances in the material culture of the marginal areas to the east and south being closer to one another than to that of the nearer central area. The data recorded by the late Percy Smith and others dispose of the possibility of the Maori having come from islands to the east of Tahiti. However, leaving this doubtful case for further investigation, we may definitely regard the two-pair weft, external major and minor ornamentation, feather work, the commencement and finish of dress-cloaks, the dogskin cloak and taniko work, as being cases of independent evolution influenced primarily by the changed environment of New Zealand. With the varied technique evolved, the Maori was

enabled to produce a variety of garments and develop a range and taste in textile ornamentation that compares more than favourably with that of any people living in the new stone age.

HEOI, KA MUTU.
FINIS.

A RECENTLY-DISCOVERED CARVED

STONE FIGURE.

BY GILBERT ARCHEY, CURATOR, AUCKLAND MUSEUM.

THE

HE elaborately-carved stone figure here described was found in a drainage excavation in Onewa Road, Northcote, Auckland, by a Maori workman. Mr. E. O. Clayton, the Borough Council Supervisor, who was present at the time, recognised its importance, and notified the Museum of the discovery of the figure, which was at once acquired by Mr. H. E. Vaile, and presented by him to the Museum.

The figure was discovered at a depth of 4 feet 6 inches below the original level of the ground, i.e., three feet below the present road level, which at this point is 1 foot 6 inches below the original turf level. It stood upright in the stiff red clay, which, in this district, underlies about nine inches of loam and extends to a depth of at least 10 feet from the surface. If, therefore, it was purposely placed here, as is likely, the owner must have been at considerable pains to conceal it.

It is composed of a soft weathered dacite, a rock which, Mr. Bartrum who kindly identified it, informs me is to be found at Whangarei Heads and near Whangarei. Its relative softness and even texture would make it a tolerably easy material to cut, which may account for the whole surface of the figure having been carved in greater detail than is usual with figures fashioned from stone.

I have designated the illustrations (Fig. 1) arbitrarily as representing "A" the front, "B" the right side, and "C" the back. The figure itself is a short cylinder, 95 mm. high and 85 mm. in diameter, surmounted by a head 60 mm. high, making a total height of 155 mm. The deep groove, shown in "B," is present on both sides, a connecting groove crossing the base. Every aspect of the figure is carved. The base has what may have been intended to represent one single spiral, seared across by the groove above mentioned; but the width of the groove does not permit one to follow out the artist's design. In any case he may have had no more idea than that of filling up the space, for the carving was done after the groove was cut;