2 FEBRUARY 1929, Page 21

It is not much that we know about New Zealand,

and Mr. Philip T. Kenway's book, Pioneering In Poverty Bay (Murray, n. 6d.), should be of interest to all who have friends out there or who have themselves wondered whether they should take the plunge and start what must be a new lice. Here is a record of hard work, of building up a farm from .hat was no more than a " twenty-acre bracken-covered flat," with a tent blown down by the wind and " a little thatched store- house of rough poles." But the author seems to have enjoyed the work, and found something to laugh about even in the Middle of dipping a refractory sheep or washing his own linen (though perhaps he did not see the joke till afterwards). Phrases like, " Ah, me—these women ! " are apt to be tire- some, but the book throws so many interesting sidelights on Dominion life in its earlier days that one can perhaps forgive them. It is good to know that the author had at least two things to remind him of home, as he tells us himself—a volume of Shakespeare and the Spectator.

* * *