NEW ZEALAND ARMS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 217, 31 August 1911, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND ARMS.

If everyone in New Zealand, says a London correspondent, is to be satisfied with the new coat-of-arms which has been chosen for the Dominion we shall have to persuade the Maori that their canoes and the Atlantic liners of to-day sprang from a common origin many centuries ago. So far as I can see, there is nothing in the design which is especially emblematic of the Maori race unless we take the ships as the prehistoric forerunners of both the Arawa and the Tory’. The New Zealand banner, which was carried in the Abbey by Lord Plunket, and is to be adopted as the coat-of-arms of New Zealand, is shrewdly comprehensive of the industries of the Dominion. Divided perpendicularly into t hree parts, the two outside parts being also divided crosswise into two, the banner thus contains four quarters and a white central strip. Tn the top corner next the staff is the Southern Cross of New Zealand, red stars on a blue ground, similar to the ensign. The quarter below contains the conventional golden sheaf on a red ground. The top outside quarter contains, lugubrious to behold, a very thin and wretched lamb, hanging dead, with a ringbolt round its waist. In the bottom outside quarter, on a blue ground, are crossed a conventional hammer and axe in token of the industry by which New Zealand has its being. The central white strip contains, worked in black, three ships of some type about Norman times, with low waists and small horizontal poop and forecastle. The mast has the sail and rigging shown in the old cuts —very similar to those used in the decoration of XVestminster bridge for the Coronation.

On the whole the result is n>i unpleasing. The ships might possibly be taken for a type of native craft, and if the lamb is unduly lean and wretched for a nation which grows mutton to* the extent to which we do, our consolation is that this is the conventional form of dead lamb for such purposes. Talking about arms and devices I have just seen the arinill which the King wore at the Coronation, and have discovered the symbol of New Zealarjd in its subtle embroideries. It is the four stars of the Southern Cross in white on a blue ground, plainly visible just the armill passes over the shoulder, Australia's wattle blossom appears just below.