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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Otago & Southland Provincial Districts]

[introduction]

page break

Social life in New Zealand is in various respects different from that in the older countries of the world. Climatic influences, the more general distribution of wealth, and the absence of prescriptive class distinctions, have led to differences which will probably become yet more marked in future years. The extremes of wealth and poverty, aristocracy and the pauper classes, are still, potentially, present in the community, but many forces are at work in opposition to them, and may in the end evolve conditions effectively alien to their continuance. Education has been made more generally available here than it has, so far, in the Old World, and as the colonists also travel more, they have become self-confident, self-reliant, adventurous, and hospitable to strangers; in a word, sociable in an extended sense of the term. At the same time they are keen and shrewd in business. As a rule colenials take much interest in sports and pastimes. In athletic sports and football the young New Zealander holds his own, though, as yet, he is not as good a cricketer as the Australian and the Englishman. With rivers teeming with fish, and country abounding with game, it is natural that he should be fond of angling and shooting. Horseracing, too, is a popular pastime. These remarks are applicable to the people of New Zealand as a whole, and not specially so to those of Otago, though, of course, this section deals with bodies and institutions, the operations of which are conducted in Otago, chiefly in its capital city.