FOSSIL REMAINS AT THE THAMES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume IX, Issue 2107, 22 October 1870, Page 3

FOSSIL REMAINS AT THE THAMES.

The Thirties Advertiser publishes the following :—" The other day, when Mr. Davi Ison, Mr. Dixon, and Mr. Stewart were on their way up to Ohinemuri, being late for the tide, they were obliged to wait, which they did at the mouth of the Puriri Creek. While waiting, Mr. Dixon noticed a large mass of fo sil shells cropping out amongst tho shingle, and with them an extraordinarily shaped Maori carved wooden image, which had no doubt been used by some Maori tohunga for working some important point in the witchcraft line, or to represent a man that had spasms of the worse kind, and if so, it is really a good representation of one. Rut it is tu e belief of Mr. Dixon, who ha« a slight knowledge ot Maori customs, that it has been me I by some Maori t ohunga to illustrate the ejects of makutu, which the tohungas claim to have the power to inflic r or remove as they pleased, which depended upon what am >unt could be squeezed out of the unfortunate sick man or his relations. With the forementioned fossil remains were some human bones of a young pt-rsou, and of recent appearance, but they were left by tin* party. There were also with tho remains, and the most extraordinary of all what appeared in every respect to be a petri-

r.ul biscuit, and amongst all the gentlemen ■wi.o iim'n it,, not one can make it anything else. Jt is a true type of the old brown fliut like biscuit, such as were given to shellbacks a great, many years ago. Mr. Dixon says that it was not an unusual occurrence for the natives to bury with their dead things that were much prized by the deceased, such as a mere, tomahawk, gun, or things of that sort. ; and ho states for a fact that the great old chief of the Tunnies — Tauiwha, or Great Monster—known to the natives an I to the whites as Old Hooknose, of Coromaudel, father to the present .chief Taraia, showed him in the year 18±5 some stull'that resembled dry mould, which he said was the remains of some biscuit which Captain Cook gave him, and which he kept in remembrance of him.