MUSEUM COLLECTION GROWS

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 14

MUSEUM COLLECTION GROWS

SPECIMENS OF BIG FISH. NATIVE MAORI CARVING. Gifts from deep sea anglers were received by the Council of the Auckland Institute at a meeting yesterday afternoon. Mr. H. White-Wickham, of London, presented a record thresher shark caught by him at Whangaroa, and Mr. W. A. Britton, a record black marlin swordfish. weighing 8881b, the biggest catch of the season.

Specimens of Maori craft included two splendid combs of bone and a bone tiki, once the property of the famous warrior chef, Te Rauparaha, which were presented by Mr. W. Cecil Leys, a member of the council of the institute.

Mr. F. C'rossley Mappin gave a pare, or dooj-lintel of a Maori house, which

had been carved with stone tools, and had remained in a good state of preservation, althousrh for a long time buried in a swamp. It was of a type peculiar to the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty.

The Rev. Jasper Calder made a gift of a collection of ethnological and natural history specimens, the principal items being a canoe prow and Maori cloaks of an old type.

On behalf of George M. Graham, Mr. George Graham deposited a number of Maori articles, two tomahawks with carved bone handles, a paddle with a carved handle, a battle-axe, a bone mere, a fine shell trumpet, and a te-whatewha.

Captain H. W. Burgess, master of the mission steamer Southern Cross gave a set of masts and a sail for the Solomon Islands canoe presented to the museum some years a«?o by Dr. C. J. Wood, at that time Bishop of Melanesia.

A carved figure of a dog, the only one known, has been acquired by the museum authorities. It has been in the possession of the natives of Opotiki, the name of the figure being "Te Kuri a Tamatea."

The Marist Brothers' Trust Board has given a collection of greenstone weapons and ornaments, formerly the property of Mr. Henry P. Kavanagh.

Among the other gifts are:—Mrs. Mantell,Maori cloaks; Mrs. H. S. Elliott, an old spinning-wheel; Mr. Arthur Lush, war maps and photographs; Mr. J. O'Sullivan, the bones of an individual specimen of dinornis gracilis, a species of moa. An unusual Maori double paddle, a Tare figure carved from pumice, a stone whip-top and a lid from a burial chest have been acquired for the museum.