The dress of a Maori girl, under ordinary circumstances, is a print frock and nothing else, unless it be a straw hat. But, like the gentlemen, she can come out a grand swell sometimes. You may see all the latest Auckland fashions in a Maori church. The general run of the girls' costume is a dress of calico or some similar stuff, clean and well put together, with a tartan shawl of the most vivid hues over the shoulders, a jaunty hat decorated with flowers and feathers, and a general profusion of natural flowers and fluttering ribbons in the flowing hair. Boots and socks are worn on such occasions, much to the wearers' discomfort, I believe. But the rangatira girls have learnt from the Pakeha ladies to indulge a passion for fine clothes, and it is seldom that they do not find means to gratify their vanity. A Maori _young lady_—for the rangatira hold themselves as of gentle blood at the very least—has several ways open to her of acquiring sufficient pin-money to place her wardrobe on a proper footing. The first and easiest method is evidently to worry "papa" into selling some of his land; but the Maori paterfamilias is not always pleased to allow his daughters to interfere with his own peculiar line of business. Of course miss declines to go out to service as a domestic in any settler's family, even if she were fitted for such a post—that is menial work, and suitable only for the inferior kuki girls. But she does not always object to do open-air labour about a farm, dig potatoes and kumera, reap and shell maize, assist among the flocks at shearing time, and take a job of humping. Often she will go gum-digging or flax-picking—one or other of these is her favourite means of raising the wind, unless she can find a market for fish, fruit, or eggs. Any way, get money she must, and will, and does, somehow or another, and on Sundays and gala-days she will appear at church or at the settlement arrayed in a style that would do credit to Regent Street. At our bush-balls the Maori girls appear in muslins, ribbons, silks, and laces—though these may not always be of the cleanest or newest. And I have even seen silk stockings—white or pink, with "clocks" up the sides—and sandal-shoes upon their feet. Nor is our modern Maori belle merely a dressed-up savage. Educated at the mission or government schools, she can always read and write in Maori, and often in English better than she can speak it. She has some idea of elementary arithmetic, geography, and history, and can use a needle and thread, study the English fashion-books, and sometimes even use her pencil and draw a little. Still, I am bound to say, all these improvements are but superficial; the Maori blood is in the girl and is bound to show itself, however far advanced may be her education.