BOOK NOTICES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1876, 4 November 1887, Page 14

BOOK NOTICES.

'The Sunken Island, a Maori Legend," by . Hood, Taranaki, is the title of a little work of a class of which vre have too few, a fact which makes it all the more welcome. Unfornnately, tho present edition is completely spoilt by bad printing and indifferent editing. • The very commonest paper procurable has been used, and the work liberally teems with typographical errors from beginning to end. The tale is essentially one of love and war. The heroine, Runa, is the daughter of Matomato, a Maori chief, who appears from the description given of him to have been a veritable giant. " He had moved onward on tho slippery path of life to a stage which disclosed neither youth nor ago. His head was so large as to have become a common byeword among the Maoris. . . . . His face was elegantly tatooed, round and flat, benign while pleased, pitiless when enraged. Erect while he stood, his shoulder bone was on a level with the crown of most of his people." Runa, as is only to be supposed, surpassed in beauty all the other maidens of the tribe, and, being somewhat of a flirt;, all the young men are her devoted slaves, their attentions being indiscriminately encouraged, a state of affairs which results in constant quarrelling and fighting. The climax of capaciousness is reached by the dusky Runa imposing impossible conditions on her lovers in their endeavours to gain her heart and hand. One is told to present her with a bowl of warm milk newly strained from the breast of a whale; another a chipped moa's egg with the young bird struggling to free itself; a third with a crab which could leap as far as a man, and which had so far overcome the disabilities of Nature as to be able to walk straight instead of ambling sidelong. This unsatisfactory conduct rouses her father's anger, and Runa adds flames to the fire by following in the wake of her highly cultivated sisters in New 1 York, and eloping, not with her father's coachman, but with his Maori prototype, Maniha, a common drudge. The trouble that enßues we shall leave our readers to fiud out for themselves. The interest is well sustained throughout the GO pages taken up in the narrative, and with a little revision it should prove of value as one of a series of such sketches should the author ever see his way to try his hand at a more pretentious work than that under notice. " How wo may Save £50,000 a-Year by the Reorganisation of our Forces " is the title of a brochure on retrenchment by Maillard Noake, of Wanganui. As a guarantee of his competency to deal with the question, the writer states that he began in the ranks of a crack cavalry regiment at Home, speedily won commissioned rank, and served in Bulgaria, in the Crimea, and in India during the period of the Mutiny. He is at present a lieut.-colonel in'tho Volunteer Forco, commaniling the Ist Regiment <>f Cavalry in Now Zealand. He further modestly states that " there are few who possess a fuller knowledge or entertain a higher appreciation of their (the volunteers') capabilities, their hi^h qualities, or their failings " than himself. The writer questions the value of the present defences, and doubts whether they are not a source of absolute weakness rather than of strength. Sir George Whittnore and the late sham fight at New Plymouth come in for some scathing criticism, the opinion being expressed that the force .under Sir George's command has retrogaded, "and must continue so do so unites a radical change is made in its system of training and organisation." The manner of effecting this saving advocated is by abolishing the office of Commander of the Forces, the Government House guard, the Council of Military Education, the Permanent Militia, and the Permanent Field Artillery.