APPRECIATION AND CRITICISM.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1695, 24 August 1904, Page 55

APPRECIATION AND CRITICISM.

(To the Editor, “N.Z. Mail.") gi r> —Beyond a question your valuable weekly production is no small fry, but is the best illustrated paper throughout the colony from an educational, industrial, agricultural, pastoral, piscatorial, and sporting standpoint, disseminating broadcast every topic of useful and practical information on a diversity of subjects. Mr Shand’s admirable paper upon the highly interesting early history of the Moriori, or Chatham Islanders, and the Maori migration is intensely interesting, and would repay all recent arrivals to peruse it and discover what the early immigrants had to contend with to convert the primeval forests and swamps into the smiling uplands and pastures they are at the present day. Since the inauguration of Sir Julius Vogel's immigration and public works policy the colony has advanced with the proverbial “leaps and bounds.'’ Regarding the stocking of the river with salmon trout ova, the credit is mainly due to Mir G. Douglas Hamilton, notwithstanding some people decry his admirably compiled work as dry as an Egyptian mummy stored in the British Museum of London. Yet) it is highly beneficial, instructive, and interesting, and I trust it will be found in every publio and private library. Possibly tlie book lacks the brightness which a more liberal sprinkling of anecdote and incident would have given, but it will serve its purpose faithfully as you truly remark, as did Lay&rd’s researches of Nineveh, or Albert Smith’s venturous ascent of Mont Blanc.—Yours, etc., August 19th, 1904. WHAREPOURI.