climbing kiekie plant (Freycinetia banksii), these were largely collected in the summer in big calabashes, being delicious eating when fresh;* see Proverb 19, “Trans. N.Z. Inst.,” Vol.XII, p.117. curiously enough the real fruit of this plant (called ureure), which was also eaten, was only ripe in the winter season, thus being, as the Maoris say, the only New Zealand plant which yielded them its fruits twice in the year. The fruits of the larger timber trees, totara (Podocarpus totara), kahika or kahikatea (Podocarpus dacrydioides), mataii (Podocarpus spicata), and rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum), were also gathered in baskets full, and greedily devoured; these, however, were only obtained through difficulty and danger, in climbing those high trees and getting at the fruit on the very extremities of their branches, which the adventurous climber broke off and threw down; in doing so not a few accidents yearly happened, some being sadly maimed for life. The purple perfumed berry of the large fuchsia shrub, kotukutuku or konini (Fuchsia excorticata), were abundant, easily obtained, and very nice when fully ripe, even to a European. So were the orange-coloured berries, though small, of the rohutu (Myrtus pedunculata); these the natives obtained by spreading their larger garments, or floor-mats, on the ground, and shaking the trees, when the fruit fell in showers; the berry is about the size of a red currant, seeds large and very hard. The large berry of the poroporo (Solanum aviculare), was also eaten; it is about the size of a small plum, and when fully ripe it is not unpleasant eating, before it is ripe it is very acrid. This fruit was commonly used by the early colonists in the neighbourhood of Wellington, in making jam. The koropuku (Gaultheria antipoda, var. γ), a curious small white fruit (though large for the size of the plant), growing on a very low shrub only two to four inches high, on the high plains in the interior, is also good eating. And so is the pulp of the rich orange-coloured fruit of the kawakawa (Piper excelsum), when fully ripe, rejecting the numerous seeds. † I should here quote a passage from Dr. Seemann's Botany of Fiji; where, in writing on an allied species of Piper (P. methysticum), he makes some strange remarks on the New Zealand plant, and on the Maoris themselves. (Like not a few others, before him and since,—hastily adopting, or jumping to, a conclusion—not yet warranted by any known soundly logical premises—to bolster-up a pet theory!) Dr. Seemann says:— “Drinking kawa being peculiar to all light-skinned Polynesian tribes, Dr. Thomson expresses surprise that the Maoris of New Zealand should have forgotten the art of extracting it, ‘seeing that the plant (P. metlysticum, Forst.) grows abundantly in the country.’ But the Piper found wild in New Zealand is not, as Thomson supposes, the Piper methysticum, Forst., (the true kawa plant), but the P. excelsum of the same author. Hence it can form no surprise that a genuine Polynesian people should have forgotten the art alluded to during the long lapse of time intervening between their departure from Samoa (sic) and their discovery by Europeans. They have, however, preserved the name of kawa, which they have transferred to their indigenous pepper (!) (kawakawa), and also to a beverage (!!) (kawa) made of the fruits of the Coriaria myrtifolia, Linn.,—a plant by them termed tupakihi, tutu, or puhou. Kawakawa, according to Colenso's statement in J. D. Hooker's Flora Novæ-Zealandiæ, signifies ‘piquant’” (Flora Vitiensis, p. 261). The small fruits