sparkling; and the wine merchants state that any amount could be sold there in the best restaurants, provided it was produced in sufficient quantity. Comte d'Abbans is confident that Hawke's Bay could be made a great wine-producing district, as the dry climate is especially suitable to the cultivation of the grape. As collaborator to the Comte, Father Yardin, Superior of the Meanee Mission, has been awarded a silver medal." I have quoted from a Paris correspondent to a contemporary, whose name is unknown to me.
I need not enter into the particulars concerning vine-growing and wine-making: that would go far beyond the object I had in view in these simple observations. May it suffice to say that they both require a good practical knowledge, and a deal of careful labour, to secure a good return. With those conditions, an acre of land, planted with vines and in full produce, could bring to its owner a yearly income of two or three hundred pounds.
I beg to conclude by some remarks on the restrictive, or rather prohibitive, measures against the importation of grapevines from foreign countries. Restrictions, to prevent the introduction of infected vines, were wise when the vines in the colony were free from any infection; but, now that the disease exists, what is the good of those prohibitions? It is absurd to shut up a sheep-pen when the wolf is already in. Those prohibitive measures are not only useless, but in contradiction of the intentions professed by the Government to favour vine-culture, and contrary to the interests of the colony, and, especially of the vine-growers, who could obtain from Europe or elsewhere the best kinds of grape-vines, perfectly sound. Perhepe they will do so, in spite of prohibition.
Art. LXII.—Curious Polynesian Words.
By Edward Tregear, F.R.G.S., F.R.Hist.Soc.
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 23rd July, 1890.]
Some years ago, when wishing to compare certain Maori words with those of other languages used on the Continents of Asia and Murope, one of the masters of modern philology assured me that the Maori tongue was not in a position for comparison. The Maori speech of New Zealand was but a dialect of the Polynesian language,[1] the conditions of which did not permit
- ↑ The Polynesians call themselves maori or maoli, as "natives;" but I shall, in this paper, confine the term Maori to its vernacular use—i.e., applying it to the New-Zealander only.
