G.—lo.

or in preparing and assembling fencing or building material; or in erecting fences and buildings or sowing pasture. The labour of able-bodied Maoris has been freely used in many districts in these activities, and there is abundant evidence to prove that it has been satisfactory and reasonable. Without it much of the pioneering in land-settlement would have been more expensive than it has been. The Maori has worked well and cheerfully. While this experience has been mainly confined to clearing forest and scrub with the axe or slashhook, Maori labour also has been used in the surface treatment of open fern, tussock, and scrub lands, where a knowledge of machinery and implements has been required. The race, as indicated in earlier paragraphs, was not wanting in mechanical genius, which has been applied in successive periods with obvious success to handling the steam engine and the internal-combustion engine in their various applications, agricultural implements of all kinds, and machinery used in the wool-sheds and dairies. The Maori is found equally at home in charge of the bullock-wagon, of horse-teams, of traction-engines, of motor-vehicles of all kinds. In all this experience the Maori was more or less under pakeha supervision, working for the Pakeha, whose brains organized the development operations and whose financial resources made them possible. (b) Experience in the after farming of developed land. The European farmer, having cleared, grassed, fenced, and subdivided his land, entered into the stage where production and farm maintenance called for qualities of another kind—vigilance, care, provision for the future, perseverance under varying conditions, bath climatic and financial, business capacity in the management of the farm and in marketing stock and farm-produce. The experience of the Maori in this the most important and critical part of land-settlement is limited. In the first place the European farmer has used him as musterer, drover, fencer, and shearer ; to clear the land of secondary growth and weeds; under supervision, to look after the stock and to assist in dipping, crutching, marking and branding, and other operations relating to the care of the stock ; to harvest; and to carry out transport of goods and produce. He was shown the proper things to do and the proper time for doing them, and the reasons for the various operations. In the second place, where he has undertaken farming on his own account he has not shown in a measure to satisfy European observers the care, persistence, and prevision which are considered essential to success in farming. In sheep-farming, where the harvest of wool, fat stock, and surplus stock comes in one short period of the year, he has not the incentive of a quick return, and reveals impatience in his method of finance between whiles, and a slackness in maintaining fences, gates, buildings, implements, and the general efficiency of the farm. In this respect he may not be singular; but it is true that his average efficiency is lower than that of the European farmer. It is here that good supervision by tactful men, who understand the temperament of the people, can render the best assistance. It has been noted by keen observers that dairying is more congenial to the Maori temperament than sheep-raising, and that the incentive is the quick return in the monthly cheque for butterfat. This factor offsets to a great extent the severe discipline and monotonous toil of the dairy-farm, although the past history of the race should remind us of the great patience its craftsmen and cultivators showed in all their work. (c) Experience in the control and direction of human factors. The Maori people owes a vast deal to pakeha administrators, educationists, philanthropists, and missionaries for the undoubted progress that has been made towards assimilation of Western culture. This is now a commonplace in the history of New Zealand. The introduction of a new and highly advanced culture, based on the precepts of Christianity, to a temperate and fertile country, inhabited by a native people who appealed to and gained the admiration and regard of the immigrants, demanded that the latter should take up some of the shock of the impact of their civilization on the primitive society they found in possession. It would have been strange if after more than a century of deliberate teaching and training as well as of actual contact in the process of settlement some response was not made by the Maori people. Dr. P. H. Buck (Te Eangihiroa), in reviewing the factors on which he was prepared to favour the chances of success for the Native land development schemes under review, wrote thus :— " I think New Zealand has been unique in the very powerful assistance she received from within. This assistance New Zealand has recognized publicly to some extent, but Ido not think that she or the world at large realizes what the Maori himself has done to render the assimilation of introduced culture forms possible. The resistance and struggles in which we were ever ready to engage have acted as the reagent which precipitated the incompatibles and separated the solutions which could be absorbed. The struggle to retain the elements of our own culture that could be retained, whilst at the same time assisting in the search for the assimilable elements, created that patriotic spirit towards our own people and the State that various Governments have availed themselves of at a very cheap rate." Dr. Buck refers here to the admirable work done in the past by wise chiefs and leaders, who realized early in the history of the penetration by Western culture that the Maori people must adjust itself thereto or be swamped ; by men and women of the race who either in the schools or in the working world beyond learnt to attune their minds to the ideas and demands of modern industry and society ; and, lastly, by such men as Dr. Buck himself, who have viewed the problem of cultural adjustment from a scientific angle and boldly assert that the Maori can now select what is suitable in the culture of the Pakeha and retain that which shows a tendency to persist in his own culture. The Maori world to-day is rich in men and women who by virtue of education, business experience, social position, and a sense of patriotism are deliberately setting about the problem of fitting their

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