474 Proceedings. 
of historical criticism. Look at our best modern histories as compared with 
the dry chronicles of the middle ages. The historian now dives into the 
springs of human action, he applies a rigid criticism even to the facts pre- 
viously accepted as historical, and he arrives at conclusions with a degree of 
moral certainty unattainable in early times. The early history of the native 
race of New Zealand is not unworthy of the labours of the critical historian ; 
their traditions are worthy of being collected and critically examined upon 
recognized principles which constitute the science of history. The language 
of the Maori proves beyond all doubt that he is a member of the widely-spread 
Polynesian family. His own tradition points to Hawaiki as the place whence 
he came, and Hawaiki is no more than a linguistic variety of the name 
Hawaii, and the two languages have no more differences than are capable of 
being accounted for by Grimm’s law. Philology is now copiously applied to 
the testing of traditions. This Society has already contributed something to 
the common stock under this head, in the most interesting paper by Mr. J. T. 
Thomson, printed in the fourth volume just issued. But we in Otago are too 
remote from the great seats of the Maori population to be favourably situated 
even for the collection of facts. The northern societies, however, have the 
facts at their very doors, and I cannot help hoping that the attention of some 
members of those bodies will be directed to the subject before it becomes too 
late. 
There is another subject, or rather class of subjects, quite within the 
province of this Society. I mean the science of language generally, and the 
Science of each particular language, and especially of our own mother English. 
Much has been done of late years in Europe in these departments of science. 
Max Miiller has produced two interesting volumes of lectures on the Science 
of Language, and he has, I think, succeeded in showing that there is such a 
Science generally, without reference to particular languages except for purposes 
of illustration. Writers in the present century—Grimm in German (“ Ges- 
chichte der Deutschen Sprache ”), and Littré in France (“ Histoire de la 
Langue Française”), Latham in England (“ The English Language”), and 
Marsh in America (“Lectures on the Origin and History of the English 
Language”), have all treated their respective languages more or less scien- 
tifically. Until the present century there were very few dictionaries which 
were anything more than collections of words with fancied etymologies, which 
were often misleading and sometimes false. The dictionary of the French 
Academy, the Italian Vocabolario della Crusca, and even our own Johnson’s 
dictionary, all fall short of the requirements of the present state of philological 
knowledge. The great German dictionary of Grimm, the French dictionary 
of the learned Littré, and the new English dictionary of Latham, are of a 
