GIVEN TO MUSEUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 78, 3 April 1926, Page 10

GIVEN TO MUSEUM.

A PROFITABLE QUARTER. SEVENTY.FIVE GIFTS IN THREE MONTHS. MAORI SECTION' ENRICHED. Already in the first three months of the year the Auckland Museum has received seventy-live gifts, some of which help to swell the already splendid Maori collection, which will be a unique feature of tnc War .Memorial Museum, now rising on the commanding hill i n the Outer Domain. As the geological specimens hr.ye been packed into cases ready for the flitting, the curator (Mr. Gilbert Archey) lias taken advantage of the room to go yver a lot of ethnological specimens that, were packed away" for lack of space to display them. This unpacking has revealed some most interesting specimens, particularly from Melanesia, including two of those remarkable carved figures that adorn the men's meeting houses, or "clubs" as we call them in civilised countries. When all these articles are sorted out and a selection made, the main collection will receive some very valuable additions. Gifts to the Maori section durin- the j past quarter include a very good onewa mere (dark stone) presented by Mr. A. T. Pycroft, Auckland. He also gave a blue-glass pendant of Maori make. Occasionally the natives employed this material, but they did not use it to the same extent as the Australian aboriginals, who made very good cuttininstruments out of glass and porcelain. Three calabashes and nine stone adzes have been donated by Mr. F. J. Williams Waipare. Poverty Bay. Mr. Price, of Auckland, gave eight adzes from the Waikato district. Mr. George Graham, of Auckland, presented four stone adzes and one greenstone adze from Paremoremo, near Riverhead. The Museum is also indebted to Mr. Graham for souis ethnological specimens from the South Sea Islands. An interesting stone sinker from Brown's Bay, Waiheke, was given by Mr. W. H. George, and another sinker from that island was given by Mr. G. R. Massey. Three stone adzes came from Mr. George Henning, the locality being Pukaki, on the Manukau Harbour, where some excavating work has been going on lately. Master G. M. Graham, of Rotorua, has deposited a historis heitiki called "Uruika." Dr. Rudolf Haeusler. of Milford, has made a second gift of paleolithic flint implements of the Magdalenian age. They were fashioned from material of alpine origin found by paleolithic man , |in the moraines left by the Rhine glacier, near Sehaffbausen, Switzerland. Mr. A. G. Lunn has also presented some paleolithic implements. Two paleolithic flake knives from Egypt are the gift of the Rev. Angus Macdonald, and Miss Lucy Macdonald sent a Maori scull-cap found on the Manukau mud-flats. Mr. Zane Grey has given to the Museum the jaws of the very large shark he caught up at the Bay of Islands. It appears to be a very large specimen of the sharp-finned whaler. The natural history section has received a sea eel, given by Mr. George Henning; a further collection of fishes from the Hauraki Gulf, given by Mr. H. D. Buddie; and Mr. A. B. W. Powell has presented the types of several new » species of molluscae. Mr. H. Carse, of • Auckland, presented a collection of dried plants — botanical specimens. In the War Memorial department, the Museum has received several maps and plans given by Mr. R. S. Abel, and Mr. Louis Phillips, of Heme Bay, donates a copy •of ' the "Cologne Post," two copies of the "Chronicles of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force," and a copy of that remarkable journal "La Libre Belgique," which was carried on right through the war, in spite of the utmost rigour of the Germans, who tried iii vain to suppress, or even to locate tliia phantom newspaper.