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Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10275, 17 February 1894, Page 4

We have received from the publishers Mr Edward Stanford’s “Australasia,’' edited by ho less eminent a person than Dr A. R. Wallace, of Malay Archipelago fame. As might have been expected of a book with such an editor, the work has many good qualities. To begin with, the woodcuts —mostly reproductions of well-known photographs*—-are an immense improvement on the common run of pictures in English volumes devoted to the colonies. The maps are up to date, and the descriptive and scientific parts of the letterpress are agreeably and vividly written. The statistics, however, are in some cases stale, and in others quite wrong. Why, for instance, should an editor take in 1893 the population and exports of New Zealand for 1889 ? He could have got much later information quite easily. Then it is not correct to say that a line of railway with branches joins Nelson to Hokitika. We only wish it did. Again the remark that the greatest quantity of New Zealand gold “is found in Dunedin in the extreme south,” is not true in any sense. The sentence, “ though not very favourable for wool a large quantity is produced,” seems as misleading as it is clumsily written. The climate of Canterbury is certainly windy, hut to state that the phenomenon of a perfect calm is unknown in this part of the colony is surely an exaggeration. Finally, what are we ito say to the assurance that “at Mount Eangitoto a rich silver mine has been opened ?” Such blots certainly destroy the usefulness of the book.