A CURATE'S EGG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 367, 5 July 1946, Page 29

A CURATE'S EGG

HISTORICAL SOUTHLAND. By F. G. Halls Jones. H. and J. Smith L#éd., Invercargill.

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

HIS is a provincial history, published by the Southland Historical Committee. It embodies the result of much painstaking research and much-collation of the research of othefs. It recapitulates faithfully, the main’ topics of Southland’s history-the.. early. | Ravigators, sealers, whalers, the Maori. worthies, the inland explorers, the pioneers and more modern ‘development: ‘The attempt to compress all this rather heterogeneous material into 200 pages was certainly -a valiant one. Historical Southland is, in fact, the sort of book which will be very useful. to students of history, local or national, useful too to teachers, and useful to all who need either a work of reference or a popular exposition-for the author never loses the opportunity of embroidering a romantic story. Mr. Hall-Jones’s most substantial contribution in this volume to the general history of New Zealand is in his account. of Southland’s provincial politics. The real significance of many of. the transactions of the provincial governments has remained obscure; this is, indeed, still a fruitful field for. research. Now Mr. Hall-Jonés has in great part done for Southland what A. D. McIntosh did for Marlborough in. the Centennial History of that province. The author has, however, at times allowed himself to fall between two,stools in his attempt to strike a balance between,a lively, popu. lar account and a procession of necessary facts. I feel too that the book loses rather than gains in vividness and actuality by the rather clumsy attempts at dramatisation, for instance, when some of the events of Maori history are put into the mouth of "an imaginary but learned. chief." There are also other blemishes, all, I think, avoidable, the blame for which the Southland Historical Committee should share with the author. The depressing format of the book is below the Centennial standard, and most of the lamntemeh

_ photographs with which it is encumbered ~reveal nothing so much as the limitations of the compilers. Then there are faults of editing, among them the lack of uniformity in the spelling of Maori names, which are sometimes given in ontemporary European malformations ‘€*Taboca’"’) and sometimes in their correct form. The index is inadequate. ~ It may’ be considered harsh and ‘pedantic to dilate at length on unessential faults. But when standards both of stock production and of editing have reached a high Ievel of competence in ‘New Zealand, a provincial historical committee should be ready to maintain ‘them at something approaching this level. These standards are} after all, a direct reflection of standards of taste and scholarship.