interest in the linguistic aspect. Though his treatment of the subject was cursory he did write sufficient to indicate that an acceptable grammar for the use of language in musical contexts was different from the acceptable grammar of speech. Moreover, because so many archaisms are imbedded in the texts of Maori chant the lexicon tends to be slightly different from that used in spoken language. Many words appear only in Maori chant and nowhere else. All this goes to show that language is subject to certain rules of lexical selection and grammatical arrangement according to the ethnographic situation in which it is used. The study of the language used in Maori chant is still awaiting the attention of some scholar. With the recent work of Dr Mervyn McLean7. Some of his publications are listed in the bibliography. the musical aspect of Maori chant is beginning to receive due consideration. He has written a doctoral thesis on Maori chant from the standpoint of an ethno-musicologist and he has published numerous articles on his work. The articles he published in Te Ao Hou have helped to gain popular support for the work of the scholar. McLean8. Personal communication from Dr McLean. has distributed copies of his tape collection to tribal authorities together with typed copies of the song texts. Some of this material is already being used in ‘waiata schools’ so that McLean has made a contribution towards the maintenance and continuity of traditional Maori chant. Gaining the support and sympathy of the people is necessary since there are signs that the New Zealand Maori is beginning to develop a resistance towards field workers9. In the Southwest of U.S.A., which I visited in 1966 (see Te Ao Hou 65: 10–22) resistance among the Pueblo Indians to academics and journalists is so strong that fieldwork is difficult to carry out. Maori reaction is only just beginning to be felt.. More has been written on the cultural aspect of Maori chant but much of the work cannot be considered as constituting an adequate study of the subject. The early essays by Colenso10. Colenso, 1880, in T.N.Z.I. and Best11. Best, 1925, in his Games and Pastimes. are merely exploratory but they indicate some of the sociological and cultural facts which are worth further investigation. Andersen's monograph, entitled Maori Music with its Polynesian Background, published in 1934, is an attempt to place Maori chant and music in the wider context of Polynesia as a whole, but the book is valuable mainly as a collection of excerpts from other sources. A historical survey of Maori music was written in 1929 and submitted as a MA thesis, at the University of Auckland. This work comprises mainly a collection of material published by Best and others and introduces little new and original research. It is, therefore, rarely consulted by more recent students of Maori chant. More recently, Dr T. Barrow12. Barrow, 1965. has published a popular book which deals not only with Maori chant but also with modern Maori music. Barrow's book points up the fact that the study of modern Maori music is also a neglected field. A reason for this neglect is the fact that scholars have held a certain contempt for the subject and they held the mistaken belief that there was nothing culturally significant in modern Maori music. The attitudes of earlier writers are exemplified in the title of Eric Ramsden's 1949 essay which goes as follows: ‘Modern Maoris and their music: Neglect of cultural sources of musical inspiration: cheap and tawdry borrowed tunes’. A popular book on the subject of action songs was written by Armstrong and Ngata and the emphasis here is on how-to-do-it. In some of the articles in Te Ao Hou there is evidence of an almost pathological interest in how-to-do-it properly, that is, in the technical aspects of action song performance. One writer goes so far as to chastise Maori groups for not practising Carnegie Hall techniques in their performances of Maori action songs13. Armstrong in Te Ao Hou 40: 23–24.. Despite these articles, no serious