Good Words of New Zealand.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 7496, 20 April 1899, Page 4

Good Words of New Zealand.

Mrs Longshore Pott 3, M.D., who visited this country some yeirs ago, made the following remarks the other day in the course of conversation with a newspaper interviewer at Wichita, in the State of Kansas : —'* '.The colony of \'ew Zealand, I think, is representative of the be3t intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon race. This is due to several causes; first, its remoteness from .England necessitated considerable expeuse for the co!onist3 to get there, resulting in a superior quality of immigrants ; and again, nnlike some of the Australian colonies, New Zealand has never had a penal settlement. It i 3 no unusual thing to find small farmers in New Zealand who have large and wellstocked libraries and who take and read all the leading magazines. Their public school system, like ours, is compulsory and i 3 rigidly enfoicad. Its requirement? for graduation are higher than onrs, and the qualifications for teachers are likewise higher It has some law 3 which I think we | could adopt with advantage. For instance, it has an alien landlord law, which makes it inexpedient for a person not resident in the country to own property there, property in each cases being taxed excessively. It has also a progressive land tax, which tends to the non-holdiDg of large estates. New Zealand, ly the way, is producing a race of physical giants. I was in one little town of 12GQ people, namsd Oisborne, where there are upwards ot 60 men who are over 6ft 2in tail. The Maoris (natives of tha country) are the largest framed aborigines in the world, averaging over 6ft in height. The climatic conditions producing these people are probably the cause of the physical giants descended from the Anglo-Saxon race."