skets of gravel to scatter over the soil of the plantations.

Almost the only staple article of Maori vegetable food which grew
wild and profusely was the fern or bracken _(pteris aquilina_ var.
_esculenta_), which indeed was found on every hill and moor and in
every glade, at any rate in the North Island. But the preparation of
the fibrous root was tedious, calling as it did for various processes
of drying and pounding.

Fishing involved not only the catching of fish, but the manufacture of
seine nets, sometimes half a mile long, of eel-weirs, lines made of
the fibre of the native flax, and of fish-hooks of bone or tough
crooked wood barbed with human bone. The human skeleton was also laid
under contribution for the material of skewers, needles and flutes.

The infinite patience and delicacy requisite in their bird-snaring and
spearing are almost beyond the conception of the civilized townsmen
untrained in wood-craft. To begin with, they had to make the slender
bird spears, thirty feet long, out of the light wood of the _tawa_
tree. A single tree could provide no more than two spears, and the
making of them--with stone tools of course--took many months. Think of
the dexterity, coolness and stealth required to manage such a weapon
in a jungle so dense and tangled that white sportsmen often find a
difficulty in handling their guns there! The silent adroitness needed
to approach and spear the wild parrot or wood-pigeon without stirring
the branch of a tree would alone require a long apprenticeship to
wood-craft.

Maori house-building showed a knowledge of architecture decidedly
above that of the builders of Kaffir kraals, to say nothing of the
lairs of the Australian blacks. The poorest huts were definitely
planned and securely built. The shape was oblong, the walls low, the
roof high pitched and disproportionately large, though not so much so
as in some of the South Sea Islands. The framework was of the durable
totara-wood, the lining of reeds, the outside of dried rushes. At the
end turned to the sunshine was a kind of verandah, on to which opened
the solitary door and window, both low and small. The floor was
usually sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing
as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their
dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent
distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a
rule unendurable by White noses and lun