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 b&j 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 " beitiki." 



"We need a specimen of every kind of local animal, seemg, 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 

 more so ; tuis and bell-birds rarelj' seen. All the natural productions of these islands 

 should be rej^resented, 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 us all. 



Many of lis who can look back for fifty years must be filled with wonder at the 

 gigantic progress which has been made Avithiu that time in nearly every science which 

 conduces to the comfort and convenience of man ; — the invention of locomotives, ocean 

 steam navigation, electric telegraphy, photography, medical anajsthetics, are but a few 

 instances. Many of these, though originated whilst we were in the mother country, have 

 been vastly improved and developed during our sojourn here ; and it is necessary, for the 

 education 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 sufficient 

 knowledge to enjoy the perusal of a daily newsjjaper. 



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 which patient research and scientific investigation has of late 

 largely relegated to the domain of myth or fiction. How did ice study this history? Did 

 we start from any fixed or known point, and then trace downwards, by successive steps, 

 ascertained facts, and their deducible effects, age after age? No. We b<^gan, so to speak, 

 in the clouds : in Greek history — the migration of the Pelasgi or Deucalion's flood ; in 

 Eoman — Eomulus and Kemus, with their wolf-mother, were taught us as dogmas which 

 it was heresy to disbelieve : and on these foundations were built i;p, by layers of con- 

 secutive fables, stories which passed for accounts of events. 



The study 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 

 esi^ecially glorious, passing by or palliating topics of a humiliating kind, — sends a 

 Scotchman to Wallace and Bannockbiu-n, an imaginative Irishman to the Tuatha 

 Danaans, Firbolgs, and Halls of Tara. Only read the English, French, and Prussian 

 accounts of the battle of Waterloo : but for the recurrence of the same names of persons 

 and places, one could hardly beheve that the three relations pertained to the one event ! 



