Abstract
FOR more than half a century the New Zealand Institute has published in its Transactions a vast amount of valuable information upon all aspects of the history of a group of the most interesting islands in the world. In the earlier years of the Dominion few of the colonists were intimately acquainted with the native language, and fewer still could penetrate the veil that hides the thoughts and ideas of the Maori mind. Many of these ethnological contributions, there fore, are of doubtful reliability. They are, nevertheless, often quoted by anthropological writers in other countries who are unable to discriminate between the wheat and the chaff. After the New Zealand University, with its highly cultivated staffs in its various colleges, began to liberate on the colony graduates trained to careful observation and exposition, it was soon recognised that the scientific study of the native race was an undertaking of the utmost urgency, for the day was already far spent for the garnering of what re mained of their rapidly vanishing traditions and beliefs.
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Maori Ethnography1. Nature 116, 151 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116151a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116151a0