Amazing New Zealand.
Publisher: A.H. & A.W.Reed Ltd.
Published: 1971
Place of publication: Wellington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 165
Notes: New Zealand is about the same size as Colorado, and a little larger than Great Britain. Its population is under three million, and it has twenty-five times more farm animals than people.
Within its small compass are found many features unrivalled elsewhere - volcanoes, boiling mudpools, rushing geysers - scenery on the grandest scale. New Zealand is the habitat of strange flightless birds, of mischievous destructive ones, and of some of the world's most enchanting feathered songsters. There, also, lives the tuatara, lone descendant of the dinosaurs.
Distinctive, too, are the New Zealand people: the Maoris, a virile Polynesian race whose earliest ancestors from the Pacific islands to the north are still shrouded in mystery; the recently extinct Morioris, also Polynesian, who lived on the outlying Chatham Islands, where they left as their memorial hundreds of unique dendroglyphs - unique bark carvings on the trees.
Then came the Europeans who, with their Maori partners have evolved a way of life and social and industrial patterns which are entirely original, though aspects have been copies from other countries, for example votes for women, and some of the welfare services.
This is what Amazing New Zealand is about - a liberally-illustrated and attractively-written account of all that is likely to intrigue the visitor to thee fascinating South Sea Islands.