WELLINGTON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 35, 23 September 1871, Page 3

WELLINGTON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

A well attended meeting of this society was held in the Maori House on Saturday evening, when the president, Mr Travers, 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 especially regarding the date and incidents of their original migration to New Zealand. Mr Travers considers that when carefully weighed their traditions prove to be contradictory and fallacious, and that while Sir George Grey especially, has done good work in collecting the Maori traditions, inquirers into this subject must he 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 read before the Otago Institute in December last, was received too late for publication in the third volume of the transactions, as it threw much light on the discussion from 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 subject. He had studied it from a different stand-point from that taken by Mr Travers, the evidence he had collected being of an ethnological and not an historical character. He had no doubt that certain natives India, the natives of Madagascar, and the Maori race came all from the same stock. As to the travelling in canoes he knew one tribe in India that voyage for many hundred miles in canoes. He however, begged to refer mem-be’-sto his 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 tlie 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 same names were common to every part of the island, and he thought that this was adverse to the idea taught by the traditions that the Maoris as we now find them, had spread slowly by natural increase from a few canoe loads of original settlers. He thought it far more probable that after the whole country was sparsely pulated by a hunting and fishing race, the natives in favored localities became crowded and powerful *nd spread rapidly by conquest, .so that they dominated over all the other natives and impressed on every part of New Zealand the same names for natural objects, and no doubt to some extent the same traditions. Mr Travers said that on this occasion he had confined himself to the discussion of the evidence of the era in which the Maories ar-

rived in the country, and believed that the proof that it was only 350 years ago was quite insufficient. Captain Hutton next described two new Species of lizards, one from the 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 genua hitherto only known in Borneo. Dr Knox gave a learned disquisition on the anatomy of the long-eared bat of New Zealand, in the course of which he drew attention to the striking affinity of the skeleton of the bat to that of man. This 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 Museum in order to illustrate his paper.