Why cricket should lag so far behind football seems at first sight puzzling; for few countries would seem better suited to the most scientific of out-door games than the east and centre of New Zealand, with their sunny but not tropical climate, and their fresh sward of good green grass. Two reasons, probably, account for the disparity. To begin with, cricket, at any rate first-class cricket, takes up far more time than football. Its matches last for days; even practice at the nets consumes hours. Athletics in New Zealand are the exercise and recreation of men who have to work for a livelihood. The idle amateur and the trained professional are equally rare: you see neither the professional who plays to live, nor the gentleman who lives to play. The shorter hours of the ordinary working day, helped by the longer measure of daylight allowed by nature, enable a much larger class than in England to give a limited amount of time to athletics. But the time is limited, and first-class cricket therefore, with its heavy demands on the attention of its votaries, suffers accordingly. Cricket, again, is a summer game, and in summer the middle or poorer classes have a far larger variety of amusements to turn to than in winter. Sailing, rowing, cycling, lawn tennis, fishing, picnics by the sea or in the forest, mountain-climbing, and tramps in the wilderness, all compete with cricket to a much greater degree than with football. Indeed the horse and the gun are well-nigh the only dangerous rivals that football has, and they are confined to a much more limited class. So while New Zealand stands at the head of the list of countries that play the Rugby game, our cricketers could at the best furnish an eleven able to play a moderately strong English county. The game does, indeed, make headway, but is eclipsed both by the pre-eminent local success of football, and by the triumphs of cricket in Australia and South Africa. Meanwhile, cricket matches in New Zealand, if not Olympian contests, are at any rate pleasant games. One is not sure whether the less strenuous sort of cricket, when played in bright weather among surroundings where good-fellowship and sociability take the place of the excitement of yelling thousands, is not, after all, the better side of a noble game. [Illustration: CANOE HURDLE RACE] [Illustration: WAIHI BAY, WHANGAROA HARBOUR]