Harding. — On Unwritten Literature. 439 



point of view. I have done so as my remarks are intended to 

 apply chiefly to the portion of the forest which may be reserved 

 for State parks, in which, by a little timely precaution, some 

 of the natural beauties of the country may be preserved, to 

 contribute to the health and pleasure of future generations of 

 our people as well as of the increasing number of visitors from 

 other lands, my attention having been specially drawn to the 

 subject by the announcement that deer have been recently 

 enlarged on the Taranaki reserve. 



As regards the timber-bushes and the forest of the North 

 Island generally, the case, I fear, is hopeless. What with the 

 continued extension of farm-clearings, and the fires which 

 originate among the debris along the road- and telegraph-lines 

 and in the old kauri-workings, the greatest portion of the bush 

 is going to rapid destruction. Every summer the country is 

 enveloped in smoke and flame, and the fires rage through the 

 standing bush, long since denuded of its natural protection. :: 

 Every season witnesses the blighting of many a lovely spot, 

 and the waste of countless quantities of valuable material;! 

 and, though here and there a settler of unusual artistic spirit 

 may manage to save a little patch from the destruction around 

 him, any general attempt would be at once laborious and 

 futile. 



Art. LXI. — Unwritten Literature. 

 By E. Coupland Harding. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 26th October, 1892.] 



Is the expression "unwritten literature" a paradox? Only, 

 I submit, when the literal structure of the word " literature " 

 is allowed to veil its true meaning. The dictionary definitions, 

 even, exclude the greater portion of what is written and 

 printed from the category of literature. Just as music is 

 independent of any system of notation, and existed long 

 before such was devised, so is literature proper a tiling apart 

 from the altogether arbitrary and conventional means by 



* In 1890, the fires which had started in the neighbourhood of Nor- 

 manby travelled along the old clearings as far as New Plymouth, a 

 distance of forty miles, destroying grass, fencing, &c, besides killing 

 quantities of standing bush. 



t In 1888, the Puhipuhi Forest, between the Bay of Islands and 

 Wbangarei — the most extensive kauri-bush existing — was on fire for 

 several weeks, when about one-third of the area was traversed by the 

 flames. It is estimated that the trees killed on that occasion contained 

 at least three hundred million feet of timber. 



