Pacific we are told that the Tahitian division of time was by moons, but that they likewise divided the year into six parts, each of which was distinguished by the name of the kind of bread-fruit then in season.
We have now scanned the Maori system of the division of time as far as it is known to us. Inasmuch as the year commenced with the appearance of the first new moon after the Pleiades or Rigel was first seen above the eastern horizon just before daylight, then it follows that the New Year's Day of the Maori was no fixed quantity; it had not the precision of our own. Moreover, the hints concerning intercalation or rearrangement, and the use of a thirteenth lunar month, show that the Maori endeavoured to make his year of twelve lunar months agree with the solar or sidereal year. These were the difficulties encountered by barbaric man in his endeavours to mark the passage of time. The Maori possessed a number of checks on his incomplete system, and should he stray too far he could insert a supplementary month to put him back on the right road. The differences noted in month and night names may perhaps be accounted for by isolation, or comparative isolation, of tribes for a long period of time. In this connection we must also consider the question of the various, parties of immigrants having come from different regions.
The Maori relied on regularly recurring phenomena, &c., as the tides, the morning song of birds, and so on, in order to indicate specific time, hence such remarks as the following: "Kaore ano kia ko te manu ka haere matau" ("Ere the birds began to sing we departed").
From some far land lost amid the shades of the setting sun the Maori brought hither the Pleiades year and his crude reckoning of time by the lunar month. He brought also the knowledge of Ra, and Sina, and Kongo, and Ira, and the Whanau Marama, the Shining Ones who gleam across the realm of Watea when Whiro sends darkness to cover the body of the old Earth Mother, He invoked the aid of those beings in his perilous journey down the path of life, for he believed them to be wondrous powers, to be potent gods in themselves. To Tane, the ruddy sun, he ascribed the origin of mankind; to Rongo he looked for aid in the art of the husbandman; to the little suns he directed invocations concerning the fruits of the earth. To all of these, moreover, he turned when endeavouring to regulate his system of time-division. He had not evolved any true chronological system; he was still groping his age-long way on the dim path of progress when our forbears appeared from the great ocean and arrested his march.
Never again will the Maori scan the heavens to note the appearance of the revered Pleiades; nevermore will his women-folk greet the lordly stars with dance, and song, and tears. The appearance of Vega is no longer looked for in the chill hour of dawn; never again, from hamlet to hamlet, will resound the ringing cry, "Ko Whanui E! Ko Whanui!"
In the days of the gods the celestial beings Uru-te-ngangana, Roiho, and Roake abode at Poutiriao in order to control the "branches" of the year. It was there that the science of tatai
