MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3294, 12 August 1911, Page 9

MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS.

A MAORI RARITY

Some time ago a well-known English collector saw advertised in a catalogue of a sale to be held at Winchester a 1 'carved coffin of an Indian chief.” He attended the sale, and found that the supposed coffin was a carved Maori box something like those used for holding feathers and ornaments, but about six times as big as the largest wakaliuia ever seen. He managed to buy it, and ascertained that it was carved in the highest style of Maori art, and that such boxes were made ta be hung in the waliitapu, or sacred grave, and to contain the bones of some celebrated person. Polac, one of the early ’writers on New Zealand, mentions seeing one of these carved boxes in a sacred place at the Bay of Islands. Mr Hamilton, Director of the Dominion Museum, was fortunate enough to get permission from the purchaser to have a east in plaster taken of this great rarity. The cast has arrived, and is now being prepared for exhibition in the museum. Nothing is known as to the history of the original specimen, but the character of the carving indicates. in Mr Hamilton’s opinion, that it came from the Bay of Islands. The museum has also just received a set of 50 “life histories” of British moths and butterflies. These consist of as many small glass-topped eases, each of which contains specimens of different species of butterfly or moth in all stages—the egg, the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the perfect insect, together with a leaf of the plant oil which the caterpillar usually feeds. The whole collection forms a very instructive exhibit, and it is hoped that it will have the effect of stimulating local collectors to work yip similar exhibits of New Zealand lepidoptera.