historical. The Indians, generally, are not on their original ancestral lands, and many of them were pushed thousands of miles towards the west, in stages until they were placed on reservations which were at last to be really reserved. Naturally enough most of the reservation lands are those which appealed least to the settlers. Land was reserved for tribes as a whole and individuals did not receive title other than their beneficial rights as members of a tribe. Tribal funds were built up by tribal land use and the like and are still tribal. The tendency in the relatively few cases where groups have been released from tutelage, has been to incorporate the group by statute thus continuing the communal notion. The difficulty now lies in fully releasing shares of land and other property to individuals and withdrawing the paternal tentacles of the Federal Government without too serious a shock. Some steps in this direction have been taken by issuing individual grants to land, but on an extremely small scale. Many other comments could be made by those of us familiar with Maori Affairs. In particular, one cannot but feel that the setting up of an independant judicial tribunal to control and effect land transactions would have been a vast improvement on the system whereby the Bureau itself by means of its administrative officers does this work. It is also interesting to see how the old familiar trouble of involved multiple ownership is adding to land troubles. The impression one gets from the statistics and other material in the book is that the social and economic status of the Indians, generally speaking, is low, and that the primary reason for this is their segregation and special status as mentioned in the Committee's statement. The old communal organisation has in my view unjustifiably been made to live on, long after its appropriateness has dwindled. Apart from all these more serious considerations there is a wealth of fascinating stuff in the book. In particular, the “Directory of Indian Tribal and Band Groups”, of about 450 pages, giving historical and other data on all known Indian groups, is, one would think, an invaluable reference work for anyone connected with Indian Affairs, and for many who are not. A directory of this sort for Maori tribes and hapus would be invaluable to New Zealand historians and Maori scholars.

EXCITEMENT AND SUSPENSE The Old Man and the Sea‘—Ernest Hemingway. With illustrations by C. F. Tunnicliffe and Raymond Sheppard. Jonathan Cape. 1955. Ernest Hemingway was born at Oak Park, Illinois, in 1898. At sixteen he began to earn his own living at a variety of labouring jobs, and after

‘POLYNESIAN MYTHOLOGY’ BY Sir George Grey PRICE 17/6 HERE in their original form are the legends, myths and stories of the Maori people as Grey obtained them first-hand from the Maori Chiefs and Tohungas. Following the text of 1855 it includes such favourite legends as the story of Hinemoa and Tutanekai, of Hatupatu and his brothers. Illustrated with drawings by Russell Clark, that is a “must” for every true New Zealander's bookshelf. Obtainable from the local bookseller or from the publishers Whitcombe & Tomly Ltd Christchurch · Auckland · Hamilton · Wellington · Lower Hutt · Timaru · Dunedin · Invereargill