Ill Manning s ' Old Neiv Zealand' 343 



that it pays better to be sober ; and still more 

 curious to see how the simple layman howls against 

 the discoveries of the doctor, who has had great share 

 in making him the cleanly animal he is, and freed 

 him in that and many other ways from a mass of 

 loathsome diseases, to the no small detriment of the 

 said doctor's pocket. 



If ever a brown race could possibly have main- 

 tained itself in contact with a white one, in a country 

 and climate fitted for either or both, one would have 

 fancied the Maori that one. He had an elevation 

 of domestic habits, a hundred years ago, when Cook 

 first found him, which placed him in sanitary matters 

 infinitely higher than any of the cities of continental 

 Europe at that time, and, even then, one or two of 

 North Britain ; and I am by no means sure that he 

 is not so now in some things. He was also a good 

 agriculturist in his way, having, I suspect, brought 

 with him his kumera} a sweet potato or batata, the 

 potato of Elizabeth's time, — which was not the 

 ' murphy ' of the Irish, a solanum, but a convolvulus 

 eaten as a restorative ; and he raised, or made his 

 women raise, a large quantity' of vegetable food. 

 He was a decent naturalist, after the old Linnaean 

 fashion, and had given a name to every plant and 

 bird he found in his new habitation, his task being 

 made easier than that of Adam (whose nomenclature 

 after all has not been of much use to us), from the 



1 The 'potato' which Falstaft' wishes for was cooked in syrup as a 

 dessert, as the sweet potato is now in Spain. 



