MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1938, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

CURIOUS CREATURES. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Kekeno (the fur seal) was said to have been around the southern parts of New Zealand in 1792. In Dusky Bay one vessel secured 4,500 skins. In 1803 a Sydney firm carried on wholesale slaughter here and realised a huge foitune in ten years, in season and out, without interruption. Extermination was near when the slow N.S.W. Government, which then ruled these shores belatedly intervened. Pepeke (N.Z. frog) was our only amphibian. From its features so strangely like those of a diminutive child, it was known as “the little red man. A curious feature was . its avoidance of water other than that in the thin filament which enclosed its egg. It was found on high dry hills near Coromandel and Opotiki, and is now nearly extinct. It was Tapu to the Maori, but eagerly sought by our curio hunters. We have no venomous reptiles. The harmless little green lizard (Kakariki) was held in superstitious dread by the Maoris. The most ancient and remarkable living reptile in the world, found only in New Zealand, is the Tuatara. Akin to a tiny crocodile, it has strong jaws and interlocking teeth. The spine is frilled like the ancient fossil of the Saurian period. The female is larger and darker than the male. Its most remarkable feature is the extinct third eye under the skin on the back of the head. It has all the form and nature of the living eyes. For centuries the pineal gland above man’s brain has been the subject of guesswork to scientists. As late as 1650 it was thought to be “the seat of the soul.” Now the Tuatara shows it is but the remains of our first and single eye. long since discarded by the Creator for a pair of more useful ones.