ne of the arts in which the New Zealanders most excel is that of
carving in wood. Some of their performances in this way are, no doubt,
grotesque enough; but they often display both a taste and ingenuity
which, especially when we consider their miserably imperfect tools, it
is impossible to behold without admiration. This is one of the arts
which, even in civilized countries, does not seem to flourish best in a
highly advanced state of society. Even among ourselves, it certainly is
not at present cultivated with so much success as it was a century or
two ago.

Machinery, the monopolizing power of our age, is not well fitted to the
production of striking effects in this particular branch of the arts.
Fine carving is displayed, as in the works of Gibbons, by a rich and
natural variety, altogether opposed to that faultless and inflexible
regularity of operation which is the perfection of a machine. Hence the
lathe, with all the miraculous capabilities it has been made to evolve,
can never here come into successful competition with the chisel, in so
far as the quality and spirit of the performance are concerned; but the
former may, nevertheless, drive the latter out of the market, and seems
in a great measure to have done so, by the infinitely superior facility
and rapidity of its operation. Hence the gradual decay, and almost
extinction among us, of this old art, of which former ages have left us
so many beautiful specimens. It is said to survive now, if at all, not
among our artists by profession, whose taste is expended upon higher
objects, but among the common workmen of our villages, who have pursued
it as an amusement, long after it has ceased to be profitable.

The New Zealand artist has no lathe to compete with; but neither has he
even those ordinary hand-tools which every civilized country has always
afforded. The only instruments he has to cut with are rudely fashioned
of stone or bone. Yet even with these, his skill and patient
perseverance contrive to grave the wood into any forms which his fancy
may suggest. Many of the carvings thus produced are distinguished by
both a grace and richness of design that would do no discredit even to
European art.

The considerations by which the New Zealanders are directed in choosing
the sites of their villages are the same which usually regulate that
matter among other savages. The North American Indians, for example,
generally build their huts on the sides of some moderate