The tumid cant of Nicholas is grotesque enough to
be more amusing than the tract-and-water style of Yate and Barret
Marshall, or the childishness of Richard Taylor. Much better in every
way are Buller's (Wesleyan) "Forty Years In New Zealand," and Tucker's
"Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn."

Among the descriptions of the country as it was when the colonists
found it, Edward Shortland's account of the whalers and Maoris of
the South Island, Jerningham Wakefield's of the founding of the New
Zealand Company's settlements, Dieffenbach's travels, and Bidwill's
unpretending little pamphlet telling of his tramp to the volcanoes and
hot lakes in 1842, seem to me at once to tell most and be easiest to
read.

On the Maoris, their myths, legends, origin, manners, and customs,
William Colenso is admittedly the chief living authority. For
his views it is necessary to go to pamphlets, and to search the
Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, where much other good
material will also reward the seeker. To John White's ill-jointed
but invaluable compilation "The Ancient History of the Maori," every
student henceforth will have to turn. The selections therein from the
papers of Stack on the South Island Maoris, from Travers' "Life of Te
Rauparaha," and Wilson's "Story of Te Waharoa," are less stony than
the more genealogical portions. Sir George Grey's collection of
the historical and legendary traditions of the race has not been
superseded. Messrs. Percy Smith and Edward Tregear edit the valuable
journal of the Polynesian Association; the former has made a special
study of the origin and wanderings of the Maori race, the latter has
produced the Comparative Maori-Polynesian Dictionary. General Robley
has written the book on Maori tattooing; Mr. Hamilton is bringing out
in parts what promises to be a very complete and worthily illustrated
account of Maori art.

As narratives of the first twenty years of the Colony two books
stand out from among many: Thomson's "Story of New Zealand," and
Attorney--General Swainson's "New Zealand and its Colonization." It
would not be easy to find a completer contrast than the gossipy style
of the chatty army medico and the dry, official manner of the precise
lawyer, formerly and for upwards of fifteen years Her Majesty's
Attorney-General for New Zealand, as he is at pains to tell you on his
title-page. But Swainson's is the fairest and most careful account of
the time from the officia