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share according to his interests in the land. This has been worked out with a great deal of success for the last few years, and it would be a good policy to follow in other districts similarly situated, such as Wanganui. The direct result of all this is that no idleness obtains, the homes are much cleaner, more sanitary, children are better fed, the women better clad, and the district much more progressive. Along the Bay of Plenty the Natives mostly cultivate maize, a few go in for dairying, but now the Natives about the Urewera and along the coast are much disturbed by the doings of Rua. This false Messiah is essentially hostile to the pakeha. Large crops were left to rot last winter because of his baneful influence, more of which anon. A few of the Tauranga Natives have started to milk, and so have a few of the Ngatiwhatua. In the Wairoa and all the northern districts we find the Natives as gum-diggers, bushfellers, timber and liax-mill hands. The Maoris in these northern districts should be encouraged to grow grapes and fruit, as we pointed out years ago, instead of letting them eke out a miserable, immoral, and degrading existence on the gumtields. It is time we were doing something practical instead of saying nice things and doing nothing. What the Maori really wants is work—it is the only pathway to health and prosperity. I would give him work, make him work, till he finds he cannot live without work. When this happens, and only then, will the Maori learn the individualistic lesson, and only then the pernicious custom of pantm et circensea will be done away with. He will then have learned the commercial relation between labour and capital. For these many years we have taught the Native the uses and abuses of money without teaching him the moral relation between money and the sweat of his brow—work will do this. The Waikato Natives have been making progress in a small way. The majority of these Natives are landless, consequejitly you find them working as labourers and as flax-mill hands. They should be given sufficient lands to work. Many of them are extremely poor, and live in miserable hovels. If they were given sufficient lands to work I am sure this deplorable state of affairs would cease to exist. I am glad to state here that two Samaritans, Miss Breretou and Miss Heron, have been doing excellent work amongst these Natives. They have been living the life amongst the Natives till the sweetness of their lives has permeated the whole pa. During a recent epidemic of typhoid these two heroines stood by their post till they were both stricken down themselves. Such work deserves all the encouragement we can give, for not only has the moral tone of the pa been elevated, but the example shown by a daily life along hygienic and sanitary lines is bearing fruit. Miss Beetham, at Rotorua, also deserves great credit for the work she has been doing during the past year in looking after the sick and showing the mothers how to look after the babies, &c. These are the kind of workers we need, for they get down to the people, and by practice demonstrate the beauties of a better and healthier life. 1 would that we had a hundred girls being trained as nurses. The attempt to get girls to the hospitals has been a feeble one. Objections were raised byone or two hospitals to the entering of Maori girls to be trained as nurses, because the pakehas would not like the association. This state of affairs in this democratic country must be deplored. One would have thought that when it became a question of humanity the skin would not have mattered, and that the pakeha girls studying in the hospitals, when they were brought face to face with suffering humanity would have had their horizon broadened so as to see only the suffering. Further, all petty and selfish differences in their station and those of their more unfortunate sisters would have suuk into insignificance with the greater work of allaying the pains of suffering humanity before them. When the Great Master calls his own they wiJi be from the four winds of the earth and of all races; it will not be a matter of colour then, but it will be a matter of what the servant has done with his or her talent. There ought to be ten girls in training where there is only one at present. We have long advocated the speedy training of Maori girls as nurses. When 1 see the afflicted and sore-dis-tressed, the sick and dying, without an experienced hand to tend them or give them relief, I grieve and exclaim, " Taihoa, Taihoa, how many murders have been committed, how many homes have been made desolate, how many babes have been made orphans in thy name I " If we are in earnest in trying to save the Maori, then we must get him as soon as he is born. It is the only way and only hope, and in order to do this we must have trained nurses at once to teach the mothers the ways of health. I know the argument that there is no money for this purpose, and I also know the past traditions of the English, and their generous disposition towards the Maori. In the pakeha's hour of need many Maoris did not hesitate to offer their lives, and now since the Maori is also a British subject, wishing to co-operate in the advancement and colonisation of the country, and in the solidifying of the Empire, I know the pakeha will stand by the Maori in his hour of need, and will see that equal advantages are given his daughters to learn the mysteries of life and death in the hospitals, so that they can prolong the days of a race which has ever been generous to the pakeha in the past and Imperial in loyalty to the King. Coming further down the coast, we enter the Taranaki District, which has been a most difficult one to deal with because of its past history. It is needless for me to go into the past—the dead past must bury its dead. What is needed in this district is to encourage the young men to work whenever they break loose from the thraldom of the " prophets." I have conversed with many of these young men, and they have all declared their willingness to work if given an opportunity. The parents were followers of the two " prophets," consequently the children had to go with their parents ; but since the parents died many of the children have lost the desire of spending their time and substance at the feet of the " prophets." When they turn home, however, they find their lands have been leased, and some of them perpetually. There should be some remedy for this undesirable state of affairs. The old Act may have been beneficial when it was passed, but now the times have changed Every Maori who has land should be given an opportunity of utilising that land if he so desire lam sure working the land would be more profitable to the Maori in every way, even if he did not make so very much out of it, than getting peppercorn rents, which he only squanders in gambling and riotous living. We want justice done in this district. At the present the Maori is only the nominal owner of his ancestral lands. He cannot occupy his own property without an