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Literature.

Me are in receipt of vol. xx (1887) of the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute. It contains altogether fifty-two papers, twenty-one zoological, nine botanical, fourteen geological, and the remainder miscellaneous. There are twenty-two plates, chiefly of natural history subjects. A very large number of new species, animal and vegetable, are described; Mr Cheeseman contributes very interesting and important papers on the botany of the Three Kings and Kermadec Islands, and Mr Colenso, as usual, contributes largely to the botanical section, his papers being chiefly occupied with descriptions of new plants collected in the Seventy-mile Bush. The geological papers are interesting, and as nearly every known mineral is found in some part of these islands, there is an inexhaustible field for the geologist. Mr L. Cussen contributes very interesting « Notes on the King Country, » including an excellent description of Taupo Lake. This extensive and beautiful inland sea is popularly supposed to be unfathomable. Mr Cussen states that its average depth is 390 feet, and its greatest depth, 534 feet. It is a pity that the hydrographic survey plan of the lake is so extremely reduced. The details are microscopic, and much of the lettering quite illegible. The very large letters at the foot, suitable as they are for the title of a large wall-map, are out of all proportion in the reduced diagram. The plan should have occupied at least a double page, and the title should not have been larger than long primer caps. The popular papers are under the head of « Miscellaneous. » We regret that Mr Colenso's important « Jubilee » paper, (of which we gave an abstract last October) has been shut out; and that another interesting paper by the same writer on « Tidal and Sea Lore, » has been abridged to four pages. Mr Tregear has three papers on Polynesian subjects. His eccentricities are manifested in an even more pronounced manner than in The Aryan Maori. Not content with finding traces of serpent-worship and references to cattle in the language of a people who knew nothing of either, Mr Tregar is now investigating the « Ancient Alphabets of Polynesia.! » As nobody hitherto ever heard of any « alphabet » among the Polnesians, the title is a little surprising. The following extract, from many pages of the same kind of matter will give an idea of Mr Tregear's style:—

—I may remind my readers that in Scandinavia, in the Runic writing, the letter answering to the Greek tau was called tyr, and written as an arrow-head (our « broad arrow. ») This may be mere coincidence: on the other hand it may be a real link connecting tau, T, the cross-letter, with the Polynesian ta-tau, « to write, paint, puncture, dot, describe, and worship, » especially as the Scandinavian tyr or tir was worshipped as a divinity. (I do not know if tir, the « arrow-head » letter of Scandinavia, is connected with the Persian tir, « an arrow; » but if so, it is probably represented among the Maoris— who do not know the bow and arrow—by tiri, « to throw one after the other, » « to throw one by one. ») To those who would remind me that printing is modern, I would say that the first writing of Asia was the printed (stamped) arrow-head of the cuneiform script, on clay cylinders. In Maori, the word used for « across » is ripeka; its meanings, « lying across one another, « « to lay across, » « to mark with a cross, » « to crucify. » The root is (apparently) peka, « a branch, » « to branch, » (a branch, whether of a tree or of a river, « to turn aside; » pekanga, « a branch road." As the Egyptian pekh, « to divide, » pekkha, « division, » and peka, « a gap, » seem to coincide with this, we may also consider if the Teutonic beck, (« a stream » , has not the same derivation as Maori peka, « a branch stream. » Close to English and England is the Breton pech, « a division. » Skeat (our greatest authority on English etymology) says of this word beck: « Root unknown. » Again the Hawaiian comes forward with a well-preserved ancient meaning: Pea (the Hawaiians lose k=peka,) means « to make a cross, » « to set up timbers in the form of a cross, » « a cross, or timbers put crosswise, » thus: x, formerly placed before the temples as a sign of kapu (taboo). Mr Andrews (Haw. Diet.) then gives this most valuable example of the use of the word: « e kau pea, to place in the form of a cross. » In this sentence (e tau peka), tau, used as a verb, is placed with peka; and I think the x (the Asiatic tau), placed in front of the temples as a sign of taboo, quite conclusive as to the sign being considered a sacred one.

It may be necessary to add that Mr Tregear (who has devoted great labor to the development of his theories) is seriously in earnest. At the same time, it is open to question whether such fantastic speculations are in their proper place in a volume of professedly scientific character. The late Charles Reade, writing of the Australian gin (woman), added the profoundly suggestive note: « = Gr., yuvń » The author was in jest; yet he has supplied a foundation amply sufficient for the transcendental philologist of the future, upon which to base the theory of The Hellenic Blackfellow.

It is strange how easily abstruse questions are decided by the ill-informed. Knowledge, in a late issue, states that the Maoris are not the aborigines of New Zealand; that they arrived in these islands four or five centuries ago; accepts as historic fact the myth that they came in thirteen canoes, the occupants of each canoe constituting a separate tribe(!); and adds that « the Malayo-Polynesian origin of the Maori is beyond question, the differences now existing between them and kindred races of the Pacific being due to intermingling with the aborigines, who were of the lower Papuan type. » This is a specimen of the « off-hand » method in science. Every one of these points is still the subject of debate; and those whose information is the most extensive are they who would hesitate to dogmatize on any one of them.

The opposition to Professor Salmond's book has given it a prominence far beyond what its own merits could have secured. It is at the best a weak production, both in doctrine and logic—its merit lying in the evident earnestness of the author, who compares very favorably in this respect with his critics. It is somewhat remarkable to find a professor of Moral and Mental Philosophy acknowledging that he cannot eliminate from his conception of the future life the ideas of time and space; and while recognizing that suffering is not a reforming agent, indulging in the speculation that lapse of time may be. His universalism has no solid foundation, and rests on considerations quite outside of Scripture teaching. In Whittier's two well-known poems, The Eternal Goodness and The Answer, the philosophy of the subject is better set forth than in anything the professor or his critics have written. The Otago Presbytery have condemned the book, indicating specially its most obviously weak points. One of the members considered the work « (blasphemous; » another thought the description better applied to one of the pamphlets in reply! The discussion was not as serious as might have been expected from so grave an assembly. One of the ministers received a rebuke for his flippancy in referring to Satan as « the Old Gentleman. »

The Hon. Mr Scotland, M.L.C, in his pamphlet, Denominationalism the Bane of Christianity, pours out the vials of his wrath upon the churches and clergy of of all denominations, Romanist and Reformed, not excepting Salvationists and Plymouth Brethren. It is always easy to find fault—if one is inclined to be censorious—but Mr Scotland refuses to see any redeeming quality in the institutions he condemns. Not only does he run a tilt against church lotteries, fancy fairs, and organ recitals, but at harvest thanksgivings, which are equally an abomination in his eyes. He is apparently a woman-hater, for he complains that « Female influence is paramount in every modern church. » « The C. H. Spurgeons » and « H. W. Beechers » he denounces as « formalists » and « worldly-minded men. » The ordinary reader will probably ask by what authority the writer thus judges men who are probably better, as they certainly are far abler, than himself. « For eighteen hundred years, » he tells us, « has Christ been banished from our midst, » and the whole Christian church is now « manifestly tottering to its fall. » « Many of the best Christians in every country now never enter a church at all, so disgusted are they with what passes current as religion. » Having demonstrated that the denominations, one and all, are hopelessly and irredeemably bad, he asks « What is to be done with the Churches? » and replies: « The solution of the difficulty has invariably appeared to me in the unmistakeable form of the abolition of every Church, and of every denominational badge, to be followed, as it inevitably would be, by the gathering together of the whole religous world into the one and indivisible Church of Christ. » The well-meaning but eccentric writer is completely on the wrong track. The bond of Christian union —the quality which distinguishes the member of « the one indivisible Church » from the outsider—is simply that of charity. Such, at all events, is the teaching of Paul, of John, and of the Master himself. Without this, doctrine and outward organization are of no avail. And it is just in this essential quality that Mr Scotland himself appears to be singularly deficient. Had all Christians a similar disposition to his, instead of the all-embracing undenominational Church of which he dreams —and which no man will ever see upon this earth—there would be as many denominations as individual members. For many of the charges he brings against the churches there is only too much foundation, and in hastening much-needed reforms, his pamphlet may serve a useful purpose. But his whole tone is narrow-minded and intolerant in the extreme; his style is turgid and inflated; and his method of dealing with a grave subject is flippant and occasionally coarse.

From Messrs Gibbs, Shallard, & Co., Sydney, we have the July number (278) of the Australian Journal, a magazine very similar in character to the English Family Herald. The Journal is long-established and well-supported, and is filled with serial stories and entertaining matter original and select.

How essentially mathematically and analytically minded the Babylonians were, says the Times, is proved by the exact manner in which they arranged and catalogued their enormous libraries of earthenware tablets, engraved with cuneiform characters, as perfect now as the day they were inscribed. The system is so thorough and so perfect that to this day the authorities of the British Museum can find no better, and they docket and tabulate these very Babylonian inscriptions exactly as they were docketed and tabulated 5000 years ago.