A VALUABLE GIFT

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16353, 16 February 1921, Page 4

A VALUABLE GIFT

TO OTAGO UNIVERSITY, [Per Press Association.] DUNEDIN, February 15. The Otago University Council had placed before it at a meeting to-day particulars of a very valuable gift that has been made to it by Air Justice Chapman and his family. Air Justice Chapman has placed at its disposal his extensive and Talk able ethnographic collection, which is one of the most important private collections in New Zealand. Ihe Maori section includes a large number of adzes, chisels and other stone implements, a great variety of fishing tackle in stone and bone, a number of finished greenstone articles and several pieces of worked soapstone, all from Centre Island and the shores of Foveaux Strait. Another section consists of similar pieces collected on beaches about Dunedin, and there is also a considerable amount of material from other parts of New Zealand. A number of the articles included in the gift have been figured in Hamilton’s “Maori Art” and other publications, and many arc of great scientific importance. Notable amo tiethese are three adzes found by Judge Chapman below tho moa bone bed at Shag River, adzes which demonstrate that thp first inhabitants of Otago were Polynesian, at any rate in material culture. The greater part of the collection was found by Judge Chapman himself and by members of his family. The foreign ethnographic section includes a fine series of Australian aboriginal implements in stone and glass, an interesting collection of European Stone Age implements and a number of fine nieces from the Western Pacific. The Alaori section of Otago University Museum now takes its places among the four most important Maori collections in existence.