by the Chambers of Commerce; it was the first time that a Maori had won it and he won it, as much as possible, in the accepted European oratorical manner, but towards the end his emotions had become too strong and he had concluded his speech with a Maori haka. That this was acceptable as a winning entry to the three judges, who included a professor of English and a newspaper editor, is an interesting commentary on racial understanding in New Zealand. The Reverend Taepa's main theme at Rangiatea Church concerned a puzzle that existed in the minds of many Maoris; why did Buck leave them? Was not his place among his own people? Like other Maori leaders, Sir Peter Buck was interested in the survival of Maori culture, but with him the study of all the details of that culture became an obsession. He never ceased collecting material on how to make objects such as fishing tackle and sleeping mats. By 1927 he had published a mass of articles and a book on this subject and he had also become aware of the impossibility of assessing the achievement of Maori culture without studying Polynesian culture as a whole and seeing what was common Polynesian knowledge, and where the New Zealand Maori had made his distinctive contribution. When he was offered a position as ethnologist with a five-year Polynesian research group from the Bernice Bishop Museum, Honolulu, he decided to accept, and the rest of his days were given up to a study of Polynesian culture as a whole. He was especially interested in the development of the material culture, to see what techniques the Maoris had invented themselves and what could be deduced about the great migrations. During his visit to New Zealand in 1949, Te Rangihiroa was not at all estranged from his people in spirit. Men who stayed with him at the meeting house Mahi Tamariki at Urenui, his birthplace, say he spent the night alone and in the morning was found deep in thought, crying. The Rev. Taepa summed all this up in his The service for Te Rangihiroa at Rangiatea Church, Otaki. (PHOTOGRAPH—NATIONAL PUBLICITY STUDIOS)