In days more leisured than those of this generation prefaces were supposed to serve at least two purposes. On the one hand, they were used to excuse or justify, on the other, to explain a work. But no book which has a right to exist needs to be excused or justified, and no book which is worth possessing requires a prefatory explanation. If it does, it is, as a book, condemned by that very fact. It is, therefore, neither to excuse nor explain that a preface is prefixed to the Auckland volume of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand.

There are, however, some facts with which subscribers have a right to be made acquainted, and which can be stated now and here more conveniently than at any other time or place. The first or Wellington volume of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand was published about the end of 1897, and this, the second volume, may, in the estimation of some subscribers, be somewhat late in making its appearance. But the delay has been entailed by two things; namely, the original plan of the work, and the determination of the proprietors to make the Cyclopedia creditable to themselves and satisfactory to their subscribers. The plan to which the conductors have from the first been pledged, and which they have carried out with the utmost fidelity to the spirit and letter of their obligation, made it necessary to bring out local sections for all the provincial districts covered by the Cyclopedia—that is, for the whole of New Zealand. All this has been done for every provincial district except Wellington, since the publication of the Wellington volume, and some of the work has been carried on concurrently with the arduous labour of preparing the Auckland volume for the linotypers and printers, and seeing it through the press. In all nineteen local sections have been canvassed for, edited and published in this way; five for Auckland, five for Otago and Southland, four for Canterbury, one for Taranaki, one for Hawke's Bay, and one also for Westland, Nelson, and Marlborough respectively; these together running into 1,922 printed and illustrated pages. Of the total, 496 pages were taken up with local sections for the Auckland provincial district, and these have been re-edited and brought up to date for the volume as it now stands. It may be pointed out, too, that all the additional work disclosed by the present volume has also been accomplished within the period under notice.

All this has been done by the proprietors in fulfilment of the plan to which they have stood pledged from the outset, and the labour entailed would have been sufficient to keep a large staff busily employed, even if there had been nothing else to do in the Company's offices. There has, however, been much more to see to; for, in their determination to make the work creditable to themselves and satisfactory to their subscribers all over the Colony, the proprietors have gone to much expense and very special trouble in carrying out a final canvass for the Auckland volume and in bringing, as far as practicable, all articles connected with it up to the latest possible date. Had the proprietors been less solicitous than they have been, not only to maintain but to improve the character of the work, and to invest it with a comprehensive and permanent value as a cyclopedic representation of the industrial, personal and public activities of the people of New Zealand, the volume might have been brought out earlier, but disgrace would have lain at their doors, and dissatisfaction would have been rife amongst the subscribers. To assume that the volume as it now stands gives no reasonable ground for apprehension on either of these scores is, surely, to indulge in no unwarranted assumption.

The proprietors do not, of course, set up a claim to absolute perfection. But they are satisfied that the original plan of the work has been carried out in the best possible manner, and with all the speed consistent with the excellence expected by subscribers and desired by the proprietors themselves. It is also claimed that this excellence has been secured not only in the volume as a whole, considered as a representative record and reflex of the personal and public life, the industrial activities and the colonising energies of the people of the province of Auckland; but in the average of the literary workmanship, the number, variety and finish of the illustrations, in the quality of the paper used in the printing, and the general get-up of the volume.

Still the work is not, in every particular, what the proprietors would fain have made it. Notwithstanding all their efforts, it has been found impossible in a number of cases to bring articles up to date, or to rewrite and reprint all the articles which were originally written and printed some years ago. Hence, here and there, literary inequalities may be noticeable, and persons in possession of the particulars may observe that changes in office, occupation and address are not recorded in some articles as they now stand. It can, however, truly be said that the proprietors have in all instances done their utmost to obviate even these minor anomalies, and that in almost every instance in which they have not succeeded, the blame is not theirs, but that of the persons or the friends of the persons immediately concerned.

The plan of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand is not that of a mere directory, which baldly enumerates in their alphabetical order all the places and all the people of a district or country. It is very much less matter-of-fact than that, but it provides for a historical and a dramatic interest to which nothing in the nature of a directory can make the slightest pretence. The intention is that each volume shall describe and illustrate notable places and scenes within the province it treats of, contain biographies and portraits of men and women in practically all sections of society, and deal representatively with the industries of the province as a whole and with the callings of the people. The proprietors claim to have done all this with the Auckland volume,—as it is their intention to do with the remaining volumes of their work,—with such thoroughness and success, that the casual enquirer will not only find the facts he may be in quest of, but students of colonial life, observers of colonial progress, and watchers of colonial industry,—those who look for facts and those who wish to get into touch with the romance of colonisation and the romance in the lives of individual colonists,—will find what they want in the pages of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand.

In a work of this nature many besides the staff employed by the proprietors assist in its production. Men of all classes have to be appealed to for information. Government officers and the members and officials of public bodies have, especially, to be interviewed or written to in this connection. For assistance thus given with the Auckland volume the proprietors and their staff have the liveliest gratitude. To mention by name all who have so helped is impossible, but if a list were drawn up, the names which would appear amongst the first upon it would be those of Dr. Logan Campbell, Mr. T. F. Cheeseman (Curator of the Auckland Museum), Miss Outhwaite, Mr. George Main, and the late Mr. William Aitken. To Mr. Aitken no tribute can now be paid except that accorded to his memory in the article which appears in the section devoted to Old Colonists, but to Miss Outhwaite, Dr. Logan Campbell, Mr. Cheeseman, Mr. Main and all others who have in any degree helped their staff, the proprietors beg to tender their most cordial thanks. It is, in a measure, due to the assistance thus rendered, in supplying articles or materials for articles, and photographs of persons and places, that the proprietors have here been enabled to produce the most comprehensive, most interesting, best illustrated volume of the kind yet published in the Southern Hemisphere.

It needs only to be added that the balance of the Cyclopedia will be completed on the principles which have guided the proprietors in connection with the present volume, and that the arrangements which have been made must result in the remaining volumes being brought out with greatly increased celerity. As a matter of fact, the Canterbury volume is already well under way, and the preparatory work for the Otago volume is also in hand.

The Cyclopedia Company, Limited.