ANCIENT MAORI BOWLS

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4593, 20 May 1922, Page 4

ANCIENT MAORI BOWLS

AN INTERESTING RELIC. FOUND AT TAURANGA. The curator of the Canterbury Museum (Professor Speight) has received from Colonel G. Arnold Ward, of Tauranga. In a letter Colonel Ward mentions that ho forwarded a specimen of these bowls to Christchurch for the Exhibition of 1906, but this had gone astray. Ho now gives the museum two specimens of these interesting relics, undoubtedly very rare, and which ho thinks have not been found in any other neighbourhood than that of Tauranga. Even there, at most, thirty have been found. In his collection, Colonel Ward has what ho considers to bo four types of bowls, namely: (a) One side very noticeably carved to got bias on, pringame; (b) one side concave, the other flat, also to obtain bias; Qc shaped like a section, or thick slice, cut horizontally from. a very elongated cone, thus obtaining extremely pronounced bias, and only of practical use, in the language of the prosentday bowler, “in a very short head” ; (d) straight bowls, both sides being approximately flat, or slightly but evenly rounded. The howls sent by Colonel Ward are of the typo (a) and (b). Ho states that in an edition of one of- Cook’s Voyages mention is made that the Sandwich Island natives played a gamo similar to our bowls, using stones. shaped like small cheeses, and weighing about three-quarters of a pound. The New Zealand ones answer to the description except in weight. The specimens belonging to Colonel Ward vary from about 21b to 61b in weight.