Note 48 — Chapter IV

Any sensible person looking at the map of New Zealand would say that this Dominion was divided into two great islands, the North Island and the South Island. But, ridiculously enough, the great South Island is constantly referred to by writers on New Zealand as the Middle Island, the term South Island being applied to a (relatively) very small island just off the extremity of the southern half of the Dominion, while the South Island is called the Middle Island. It should really be known as the South Island and the small island beyond it as Stewart Island.