.jpg)
Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
The Journal of Science of Dunedin has calmly lifted the report of the Wellington Philosophical Society's meeting, amounting to several columns, from the Monthly Record. We have no objection to the editor filling his pages from that source, but ordinary courtesy should have suggested an acknowledgment.
It is quite time that the offensive and misleading term « squatter, » applied to sheepfarmers, dropped for ever out of the New Zealand press. It is only within the past four or five years that it made its appearance in certain periodicals, which were not of a very high class, and it may occasionally be found in a respectable newspaper. The term is altogether inaccurate. There never were any sheep-farming squatters in New Zealand, and the race has long been extinct in Australia.
Mr W. P. Reeves is editor of the Lyttelton Times. ؟What is to be said of the taste which permitted the following fulsome reference to him to appear in the home summary of that paper?— « Mr W. P. Reeves as the leader of the Liberal party in Canterbury, to whose influence and generalship the striking victory of the party in this part of the country was mainly due, had claims which no Premier could dream of passing over—not that Mr Ballance did dream for a moment of doing without his young lieutenant…. The one man of school education is Mr Reeves, who had a most brilliant career at Christ's college. The others are notable instances of self-educated men. »
« 'Koi » is the popular name of a locality in Southland, the full native name being Waikoikoi. Several queries have appeared in the southern papers as to the meaning of the term. « Wai » (water) is a common prefix to the names of rivers; « koi » or « koikoi » signifies in Maori and in Polynesian generally, anything thorny or sharp-pointed. Among the large number of examples of the word in Tregear's Dictionary, we find a secondary meaning, which does not seem to be in current use in New Zealand. In the Moriori and Paumotan, the word signifies also « sharpness » in the sense of quickness and urgency. Therefore, as native names are generally descriptive, it may be inferred that the Waikoikoi is a swift stream, probably with many sharp-pointed rocks or stones in its bed.
The Daily Chronicle says:—Who can be expected to master the niceties of the Latin tongue, when the very professors of the language wrangle over them? The other day a lynx-eyed member of a Scotch school board thought he detected in the corrections appended by the rector of the school to a pupil's Latin exercises a decided taint of barbarism. He communicated the discovery to his brother members, and then to the rector, who defended his Latin with tooth and nail. The board forwarded the exercises to the head master of a famous academy in Edinburgh, whose decision was adverse to the rector, and the latter straightway received three months' notice. Meanwhile another rabbi had been called to sit in judgment on the exercises—no other than the Professor of Latin in a Scotch University—who denied that the Latinity of the rector was of the canine order, and practically condemned the action of the School Board.