its carved feather and basket as Porangahua, who returned to Hawaiiki to fetch kumara tubers and who returned to Ao-te-a-roa on the back of the great bird of Ruakapanga? Possibly a descendant of this marae will learn the old chant ‘popo’, but it will be a meaningless euphony of sounds, not understood and never even remotely to be associated with this carving into which some ancestor lovingly graved that proud story. Who will know or care that this effigy, by its chaplet of carved leaves, is marked as the bearer of the ultimate mana of these parts; or that one, by the hei poria carved on his breast, was master of the forests and the birds they contained. The forests themselves are not more utterly gone than is the fame of him, here depicted in forgotten effigy, who once ruled them. ‘Stone, steel, dominions pass’, and little enough is left of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. I am a pakeha and why should I grieve that a dozen or so carved slabs gaze into a fading past with their paua eyes. I have no papakainga here other than that which love and understanding of these old, forgotten, far-off things gives me. The marae is empty, for its people have gone to the city. But perhaps some ghosts remain, and perhaps I shall return, when I am able to, giving them back, in a momentary at one-ment with them, a fugitive, flickering segment of eternity. Mr Fowler, I wonder what has happened to your ancestral halls, ancestral burial grounds and villages. Have they succumbed to industrial cities? Are your ancestors bones being daily pounded by vehicles and machines? When did your ancestors lose their ancient skill of snaring birds? Why did your people leave their villages to start afresh in this land? Are you afraid that what has happened to you is happening to us? You have written a thought provoking article. What you say is true but what you have left unsaid is that this sort of thing is not peculiar to Maoridom, but is the fate of all people. It is the price that is paid for progress. It respects neither race nor creed. It is inevitable. I suppose the truth hurts. To return to the point of discussion. Maoridom is undergoing a dramatic transformation from an agricultural into an industrial society. The old social structure is disintegrating but the new one is yet amorphous. The agricultural Maori family in a rural setting was a group organised for community production and living. It was also the primary unit of social life in which the rearing and education of the individual was the responsibility of the tribe as a whole. Brought up and nurtured in the traditions of his tribe, the individual developed a pattern of personality which fitted neatly into the social pattern. Now that Maori society is being industrialized, population is more and more concentrated in cities, commercial and industrial influence is spreading to the countryside, the old social pattern is breaking up and the tribal system is disintegrating. Living in such an age, the youngster, and in some cases the parent, has no idea of the behaviour patterns of his grandparents' generation and may be unable to comprehend them at all; neither can he accept all the rules of conduct of his parents' generation and may be unable to appreciate their full significance. I again reiterate that this is not confined to Maoridom. Obviously your article has raised my defensive mechanism. It has also made me think of a problem that I have often thought about and left hanging on a sky hook. The Old Marae poses a question… ‘What are we going to do about it and how?’ The answer may parallel this story. A doctor said to his patient, “Hone, do you ever have trouble in making up your mind?” Hone replied, ‘Well … Yes and No.” Enough. N. P. K. Puriri