Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 12.djvu/185

Rh  to conclude from the presence of these two fragments, that the visitors to that locality were already addicted to cannibalism.

Possibly the bone may have belonged to a stranger or to a slave, having been broken at the time of death to be used for making tools. I have no doubt that further researches which Mr. R. Gillies intends to make in this spot, will throw more light on this subject. The only other specimen of human workmanship found amongst this layer of refuse is a small fish-hook made of bone. It is of a very primitive form, unlike any other I have hitherto obtained elsewhere. Of other material of the manufactory layer, there were a few small pieces of flint and chalcedonic quartz, cores, thrown away as useless.



indebted to Captain Hutton for calling my attention to a discussion, which took place a short time ago, between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Pole, with reference to the colour-sense of the Greeks.

The question was raised by Mr. Gladstone, in the October number of the "Nineteenth Century" (1877), and his statements were subsequently reviewed by Mr. William Pole, in an article which appeared in the October number of "Nature" (1878), under the title of "Colour-Blindness in relation to the Homeric Expressions for Colour."

Mr. Gladstone maintains that the organ of colour was only partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age; and supports his opinion by many examples drawn from the Homeric poems. Mr. Pole, on the other hand, maintains that Homer was colour-blind, and proceeds to establish his views by evidence drawn from his own sensations of colour, which coincide in a remarkable degree with the colour-expressions in Homer, as interpreted by Mr. Gladstone.

The question raised is one full of interest, both to the scholar and to the naturalist, whether as regarded from its bearing on the controversy respecting the authorship of the Homeric poems, or on the development of a human sense within a period of time known to history.

But I shall not presume to follow the arguments of either of these learned writers upon the question in dispute between them, neither my scholarship nor my acquaintance with the subject would entitle me to do so. Mine is the more modest task of furnishing such facts regarding the colour-sense of the Maoris, as have come under my observation, during more than