though the climatic conditions of their new home compelled them to discard bark-cloth, and to clothe themselves with the warmer hand-made garments of Phormium and Cordyline fibre. A close comparison of ancient New Zealand and eastern Polynesian art shows that the manufacture of greenstone articles is all that the Maori can exclusively claim. But did the modern Maori discover the greenstone and how to work it; or did they—as the Pelorus and D'Urville Island natives assert—obtain the knowledge from a people whom they found in occupation when they discovered the archipelago? Though greenstone is not found in any of the eastern Polynesian islands or in Micronesia the inhabitants possessed a few articles made of it when Europeans first went amongst them. If the Maori came here from the Cook Islands, or the Society Group, they may have brought with them some of these articles, or a knowledge of them; but it is impossible that they could have been acquainted with the mode of working the material when they quitted Polynesia. In the manufacture of stone implements and ornaments the natives of eastern Polynesia did not excel, shell being much in use as a substitute. In Micronesia shell was exclusively used, though obsidian and other volcanic rocks were abundant. Unless Polynesian art had greatly changed between the advent of the canoe-men and the time when our knowledge of the region commences, the Maoris must have acquired their skill in working stone after they made these islands their home. We have positive evidence of two very distinct periods in the history of New Zealand—the period of the pit-dwellers, and the modern Maori period, which virtually closed when Cook rediscovered the group. That the greenstone, and how to work it, was known to the ancient as well as the recent inhabitants is proved beyond question by numerous articles found in the Pelorus district, contiguous to pit-dwellings, and beneath the roots of large forest-trees. If the pit-dwellers, who occupied the country from the Bay of Islands to Otago, and from whose remains Judge Maning years ago concluded* “Old New Zealand,” by a Pakeha-Maori (Maning). that the islands had at some remote period a much larger population than Europeans found in them—if these ancient inhabitants were a distinct people, and not merely the Maori in an early stage of their history, we must accept the tradition of the Pelorus natives with regard to the greenstone. When Cortez landed in Mexico the envoys of Montezuma, after presenting a quantity of gold and other valuables as a particular mark of their sovereign's friendship, gave him for