Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/20

 over the soil covered the grain. In this way they would sow as much grain as was covered by the day’s digging. The crop, of course, did not ripen evenly, but as they cut it with the hook this did not matter. They cut it as it ripened. The Maori always had an eye to saving labour.

One great source of food supply to the Maoris was the “mutton bird.” This is a sea bird of nocturnal habits frequenting the coasts of New Zealand, especially in the south—Stewart Island and the Bluff. The female lays a single egg, nesting on the headlands by the sea. When the young is fledged both parents feed it until it gets so fat that it cannot fly. The parents then cease their attentions, and the young bird subsists on its own condition for two or three weeks, at the end of which period it has the ability as well as the incentive to look after itself. It is at this helpless period of repletion that the Maoris collect the young mutton birds. They are first plucked, and then, preserved in their own fat, are packed in bags made from the broad-leaved kelp, which forms an impervious casing round each bird. Finally those kelp bags are covered by totara or manuka bark, and the