the native names are far more euphonious than those of Australia. There is already a good deal of literature about the Maoris, their habits and customs and religious ideas. No doubt they are of the widely-spread Malay race, which has over-run the South Pacific. The religious notions of the most different races in a certain stage of civilization much resemble one another. We know, for instance, that the Greeks of Homer's time (whatever that was) besides worshipping the gods of Olympus, identified every ruin, mountain, or cape with some superhuman person--whether demon, or hero, or nymph. So we read (in Wakefield's adventures in New Zealand) that the chief Heu-Heu appeals to his ancestor the great mountain Tongariro, "I am the Heu-Heu, and rule over you all just as my ancestor, Tongariro, the mountain of Snow, stands above all this land." Heu-Heu refused permission to anyone to ascend the mountain, on the ground that it was his _tipuna_ or ancestor,--"he constantly identified himself with the mountain, and called it his sacred ancestor." The mountains in New Zealand are accounted by the natives male and female. Tarawera and Taranaki, two male mountains, once quarrelled about the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the neighbourhood. A great deal about the transactions between the New Zealand Government and the natives may be learnt from the recent interesting libel action of _Bryce_ v. _Rusden_, in which the former, who has been native minister in the Government, recovered L5000 damages against the defendant, the author of a History of New Zealand. Up to 1876 the islands were divided into nine provinces, each of which had a separate Council, subject to the central Government at Wellington, but in that year the provincial Councils were abolished, and the Government is now like that of the Australian Colonies, with a governor and two houses of Parliament. The members of the Lower House are paid. In "Greater Britain," Sir Charles Dilke, making a contrast between New Zealand and Australia, suggests that New Zealand is aristocratic and Australia democratic. To me they appeared equally democratic. The payment of members is an advanced step even in a democracy.