MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 March 1941, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

SUPPLANTERS. (Recorded by J.H.S.. of Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) How strange that in 1868 the Maori song (Waiata) should have revealed a factor in our natural history which since then and even in this age of research is not referred to in the Press or on the public platform. That.Waiata-in order to prove that the Pakeha would eventually supplant the Maori, gave this series of illustrative facts in poetic form. Stated briefly, the song pointed out ‘’that Pakeha flies, grasses, rats, birds, and tree’s would in the end drive out the Maori varieties.” In that same year an observant visitor pointed out that the soil gradually exhausted certain essential elements needed for their growth. He also drew attention to the fact that European trees introduced here matured in less than half the time of their home growth. That which is true of our animal and vegetable products is true also of men. Think how our peaches and other stone fruits grew wild near the bush and on the roadside sixty or seventy years ago. The pigs feeding upon them grew to a size never hitherto known in Europe. This reminds me of our boyhood observation of how animal instinct or intelligence in those stupid pigs was developed. Pigs, like their Maori owners, -are afflicted with vermin, and get rid of them by rubbing against a post or a tree. The Maori pigs not only relished the windfall peaches, but they soon learned to crack the peach stones and eat the kernels. Still more wonderful to us boys, we saw the mother of a litter of a dozen piglets, after clearing up the windfalls, deliberately shaking the trees by the pressure of her shoulder, and bringing down a shower of the ripe peaches. This they had quickly observed was the effect of a comforting scratching.