PREHISTORIC NEW ZEALAND

MR WRAGGE'S RESEARCHES

-AUCKLAND, Nov. 21

Returning to iNew Zealand after an absence of seven months, Mr Clement Wragge, who was a passenger from Sydney by >tke Maheno to-day, is as firmly convinced as ever that the. inscriptions he discovered at the Bay of Islands have nothing >to do with "the Maories, but have a prehistoric origin. Speaking to a reporter on the subject, Mr Wragge said: "The mades have to my mind been made by a people .allied to those who buil>t the wonderful statues and carved the marvellous inscriptions on Easter Island. The latter Jiaye mothing to do with the Polynesians, but are rallied to those found in Central and South America, and v date from long years ago. In fact, they refer to the AtlanteaJi race which intermingled with <the still more ancient race of Lemurians. These, I am convinced, inhabited a land which once existed where is -now the Pacific Ocean. Easter Island, Piteaira, Xaliii, Raiatea; Fiji, New Caledonia and Rarotonga are the mairt or foundation rocks, and New Zealand soutli-east Australia are undoubtedly the remains sticking up of that old Lemurian land. "I have information," he added, "that in the north of New Zealand (I do not care to disclose >the exact locality at present) there .are to 'be found in certain caves human bones of enormous size, far larger than those of human beings of to-day. If this is true, they are the bones of. the old Lemurdan — Atlantean race. ■ I intend to have a look for them.'*