H.—l2,

8

APPENDIX.

Civil Service Examination Papers, October, 1884. JUNIOR. ENGLISH.1 Passage for Dictation. His tone was light; his topics were the topics of the club and ball-room; and therefore his strange combinations and far-fetched allusions, though very closely resembling those which tire us to death in the poems of the time of Charles 1., are read with pleasure constantly new. No man who has written so much is so seldom tiresome. In his books there are scarcely any of those passages which, in our school-days, we used to call skip. Yet he often wrote on subjects which men of great talents have in vain endeavoured to render popular. He rejects all but the attractive parts of his subject. He keeps only what is in itself amusing, or what can be made so by the artifice of his diction. The coarser morsels of antiquarian learning he abandons to others, and sets out an entertainment worthy of a Boman epicure, an entertainment consisting of nothing but delicacies, the brains of singing-birds, the roe of mullets, the sunny halves of peaches. This, we think, is the great merit of his romance. There is little skill in the delineation of the characters. 1. Write the passage dictated to you. 2. What are auxiliary verbs ? Conjugate them. 3. Give examples of nouns (not proper) (a) which are not found in the singular, (b) which are not found in the plural. 4. Define conjunctions and classify them, giving examples. 5. Analyse the following : — He saw the national spirit sinking; yet he knew what the resources of the empire could effect, and he felt that he was the man to employ them vigorously. 6. Write a letter to a friend in England, telling him fully the advantages or disadvantages (or both) which in your opinion he would derive from coining to New Zealand. ABITHMETIC. 1. Add together— Tons cwt. qr. lb. oz. 13 9 2 25 1 4 7 3 18 13 2 3 0 15 6 0 19 1 27 15 22 18 3 19 9 2. Divide £9,087,065 13s. OJd. by 99, and prove the answer. 3. £5 14s. OJd. will buy a certain quantity of meat at 6Jd. a pound: find cost of same quantity at 7^-d. a pound. 4. Beduce ten million square inches to acres, &c. 5. Simplify 31 of si+f(6i-ll)- -J. 6. Beduce to a decimal, and divide the result by *025.„ State the rule according to which you place the decimal point in the quotient, and prove it. 7. Find the value of *175t0n + *195cwt. + *145qr. + *151b. 8. If fd. be the interest on 12s. 6d. for a calendar month, what is the rate per cent, per annum ? 9. Make out an invoice of the following goods (neatly), and deduct 2-J- per cent, for cash payment: 50yd. cloth at 6s. 9Jd.; 100yd. calico at 9d.; 20 dozen wine at 255. 6d. per gallon (six bottles to the gallon); 241b. coffee at Is. Bd.; 451b. tea at 2s. 9d.; lcwt. flour at £37 6s. Bd. per ton ; 1681b. sugar at £28 per ton. 10. How many boards 18-J-ft. long by 7in. wide will be required to floor a room 10yd. Ift. 9in. long by 24|ft. wide? 11. How much stock did I sell when, stocks being at 94J, I received £720 10s. for what I sold? HISTOBY. 1. Where are the descendants of the ancient tribes of-Britain now chiefly to be found ? 2. What makes the reign of Alfred the Great memorable in English history ? 3. How did England obtain possession of Ceylon, Aden, Mauritius, St. Helena, Nova Scotia, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand ? 4. Assign events to the following dates : 1164, 1215, 1455, 1588, 1628, 1775, 1854. 5. The English fought on three different occasions at Acre, in Palestine—when, why, and under whom ? 6. What claims had Edward IV., Henry VII., James 1., and George I. to the Crown of England?