Of course, however, it is in the newspapers that we have the plainest evidence of the average public taste. It is a land of newspapers, town and country, daily and weekly, small or of substantial size. To say that the best of these equals the best of the English provincial papers is not, I fear, true. The islands contain no daily newspaper which a journalist can honestly call equal to the _Manchester Guardian_ or the _Birmingham Post_; but many of the papers are good, and some of them are extraordinarily good for towns the largest of which contains, with its suburbs, but 90,000 people. No one journal towers above the others. If I were asked to choose a morning, an evening, and a weekly paper, I should perhaps name the _Otago Daily Times_, the Wellington _Evening Post_, and the Christchurch _Weekly Press_; but the _Auckland Weekly News_ has the best illustrations, and I could understand a good judge making a different selection. The most characteristic of the papers are illustrated weekly editions of the chief dailies. These good though not original products of island journalism are pretty close imitations of their Victorian prototype, _The Australasian_. The influence of the Press is considerable, though not perhaps as great as might be looked for from the numbers and success of the newspapers. Moreover, and this is really curious, they influence the public less in the politics of the colony than in several other fields. In a book on New Zealand published ten years ago, I wrote in my haste the words, “There is no Colonial literature.” What I meant to express, and doubtless ought to have said, is that there is no body of writing by New Zealanders at once substantial and distinguished enough to be considered a literature. I did not mean to suggest that, amongst the considerable mass of published matter for which my countrymen are responsible, there is nothing of good literary quality. It would not have been true to say this ten years ago, and it would be still less true to say it now. Amongst the large body of conscientious work published in the colony itself during the last quarter of a century there is some very good writing indeed. A certain amount of it deserves to be better known outside our borders than it is. Putting manner aside for the moment, and dealing only with matter, it is, I think, true to say that any thorough student of New Zealand as it is to-day, or has been since 1880, must for authentic information mainly go to works published in the colony itself. I have some right to speak, for I have been reading about New Zealand for forty years, and all my reading has not been desultory. Slight as is this book, for instance, and partly based as it is on personal recollection and knowledge gleaned orally, still I could not have written it without very careful study of many colonial writings. In scanning my list of later authorities consulted, I am surprised to find what very few exceptions there are to