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546 Proceedings. 
I need not recapitulate the several objects which our Museum contains, for most of 
you are familiar with these, but I wish to say a few words upon our deficiences. 
We require to make as perfect an assortment as can be got together of all descrip- 
tions of implements, weapons, and manufactures of the Maori race and their South Sea 
congeners—a task becoming more difficult every day. Students in ethnology will require 
these things to guide them. As an instance of such use, I may mention that, looking the 
other day at engravings of the sculpture on a temple at Palengue, in Central America, I 
was forcibly struck by their wonderful resemblance in feature and attitude to the well- 
known Maori “ heitiki.” 
We need a specimen of every kind of local animal, seeing, as we do, that many of 
the indigenous species are rapidly becoming extinct, as the native dog and rat, both at 
one time largely used for food ; birds, too, are disappearing ; quail, once plentiful, are no 
ore so; tuis and bell-birds rarely seen. All the natural productions of these islands 
nd be represented, both for our own instruction and for that of strangers, who, 
visiting us, desire to carry away with them a knowledge of our resources. But, in 
addition to objects of these classes, obtainable on the spot, there are other materials to 
be sought elsewhere, which are as essential to u 
Many of us who ean look back for Mn years must be filled with wonder at the 
gigantie progress whieh has been made within that time in nearly every science which 
eonduces to the comfort and convenience of man ;—the invention of locomotives, ocean 
steam navigation, electric REJE P medical anesthetics, are but a few 
instances. Many of these, though originated whilst we were in the mother country, have 
been vastly improved and oe OR our sojourn here; and it is necessary, for the 
edueation both of ourselves and children, unless we desire to drop behind in the march of 
human advancement, that we should possess models and scientific apparatus. Without 
converting our building into a polytechnic, or attempting ourselves to become savans, we 
must devote some little attention to these matters if we wish even to attain suflicient 
knowledge to enjoy the perusal of a daily newspaper. 
In other ways the world gets wiser. Are we to keep pace? 
Let us turn to history. Most of us who have passed middle age must look back with 
regret upon the many hours wasted in our youth in learning what was in those days termed 
* ancient history," but whieh patient research and scientific investigation has of late 
en relegated to the domain of myth or fiction. How did we study this history? Did 
start from any fixed or sero poss. and then trace me by successive steps, 
ERE facts, and their d ible effects, age after age? No. We began, so to speak, 
in the clouds: in Greek history—the migration of the Pelasgi or Deucalion’s flood; in 
Roman—Romulus and Remus, with their wolf-mother, were taught us as dogmas which 
it was heresy to disbelieve: and on these foundations were built up, by layers of con- 
secutive fables, stories which passed for accounts of events. 
y of comparatively modern, or even contemporaneous history, is beset with 
many difficulties, not the least being the danger of being misled by the colouring with 
which political partizanship has tinged the authors’ narratives ; but beyond this a sort of 
semi-excusable nationalism prevails, which makes an Englishman prone to unduly 
expatiate on those portions of his country’s career which have been in his eyes more 
especially glorious, passing by or palliating topics of a humiliating kind,—sends a 
hman to W: 
Scote: alle and Bannockburn, an imaginative Irishman to the Tuatha 
Danaans, Firbolgs, and Halls of Tara. Only read the English, French, and Prussian 
im usen of the battle et Misterios: nt i pe recurrence of the same names of persons 
pertained to the one event! 
