WELLINGTON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3305, 18 September 1871, Page 2

WELLINGTON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

A well attended meeting of this society was held in the Maori House on Saturday evening, when the president, Mr Travere, read a most interesting paper on the traditions of the Maoris and their value as evidence in the investigation of the history of the race, and especiully regarding the date and incidents of their original migration to New Zealand. Mr Travers considers that when carefully weighed their traditions prove to bo contradictory and fallacious, and that while Sir George Grey especially, has done good work in collecting thd Maori traditions, inquirers into this suhjecfc must be on their guard against accepting his works as being in any sense historical records.

Dr Hector, Chairman, regretted that a very valuable paper on this subject by Mr J. T. Thomson, which was road before the Otngo Institute in December last, wns received too late for publication in the third volume of the transactions, as it threw much light on the discussion fvoin another point of view. He was glad, however, to observe that the author of the paper was present, and hoped that he would favor the society with some comments.

Mr Thomson said he was not prepared to go into the subjoct. Ho had studied it from (i different stand-point from t! at taken by Mr Travel's, the evidence ho had Ci llected being of an ethnological and not an historical character. He had no doubt that certain natives India, the natives of Madagascar, and the Maoti race came all from the fame Btook. .A a to the travelling in canoes he knew one tribe in India that voyage for many hundred miles in canoes. Ho however, begged to refer tncm« bcato liis paper which he understood would appear in the forthcoming volume. Captain Hutton remarked on the birds which tradition asserted the Maoris to have introduced, and thought that the only one of them which was at all likely to have been brought from the Pacific Islands, was the green paroquet. Dr Hector drew attention to the interesting circumstance, that the Maori had not only distinct names for all native objects even to minute plants, also that the snme namee were oommon to every part of the island, and he thought that this was adverse 4o the idea taught by the tradition that the Maoris as wa

DOW find them, had spread slowly by natural increase from a few canoe loads of original settlers. Ho thought it fur more probablo that after the whole country was sparsely pulated by a hunting and fishing race, the natives in favAved localities becavne crowded and powerful and spread rapidly by conquest, so that tlwy dominated over all the other natives and impressed on every part of New Zealand the same names for natural objects, nnd no doubt to some extent the same traditions.

Mr Travel's said that on this occasion ho had confined himself to the discussion of the evidence of the era in which the Maories arrived in the country, and believed that the proof that it was only 350 years ago wns quite insufficient.

Captain Hutton next described two now Species of lizards, one from tho Nelson mountains and the other from White Island, the active volcano in the Bay of Plenty. The latter has peculiar interest, as it belongs to a genus hitherto only known in Borneo. Dr Knox gave a learned disquisition on tho anatomy of the long-eared bat of New Zealand, in the course of which ho drew attention to the striking affinity of the skeleton of the bat to that of man.

TMb drew some facetious remarks from Major Richardson, after which the President drew the attention of members to the beautiful preparations which Dr Knox had made for the Museuni,in order to illustrate his paper.