ted the attention of Europeans are certain of those
more lofty ones of which we have just spoken.

These trees had attracted Cook's attention in his first voyage, as
likely to prove admirably adapted for masts, if the timber, which in its
original state he considered rather too heavy for that purpose, could,
like that of the European pitch-pine, be lightened by tapping; they
would then, he says, be such masts as no country in Europe could
produce. Crozet, however, asserts, in his account of Marion's voyage
that they found what he calls the cedar of New Zealand to weigh no
heavier than the best Riga fir.

Nicholas brought some of the seeds of the New Zealand phormium with him
to England in 1815; but unfortunately they lost their vegetative
properties during the voyage. It appears, however, that, some years
before, it had been brought to blossom, though imperfectly, in the
neighbourhood of London; and in France it is said to have been
cultivated in the open air with great success, by Freycinet and Faujas
St. Fond. Under the culture of the former of these gentlemen it grew, in
1813, to the height of seven feet six lines, the stalk being three
inches and four lines in circumference at the base, and two inches and a
half, half-way up. Upon one stalk he had a hundred and nine flowers, of
a greenish yellow colour; and he had made some very strong ropes from
the leaves, from which he had obtained the flax by a very simple
process.

According to Rutherford, the natives, after having cut it down, and
brought it home green in bundles, in which state it is called "koradee,"
scrape it with a large mussel-shell, and take the heart out of it,
splitting it with the nails of their thumbs, which for that purpose they
keep very long. It would seem, however, that the natives have made
instruments for dressing this flax not very dissimilar from the tools of
our own wool-combers. The outside they throw away, and the rest they
spread out for several days in the sun to dry, which makes it as white
as snow. In this prepared state it is, he says, called "mooka." They
spin it, he adds, in a double thread, with the hand on the thigh, and
then work it into mats, also by the hand: three women may work on one
mat at a time.

Nicholas, on one occasion, saw Duaterra's head wife employed in weaving.
The mat on which she was engaged was one of an open texture, and "she
performed her work," says the author, "with wooden pegs stuck in the
ground at eq