the life of a people finds expression in its buildings,this thesis constitutes a modest attempt on the part of the author to view the growth of the province of Canterbury from what, to the historian, is perhaps a new angle. From the new vantage ground, it may be that we shall see such features as the standards of living,the persistency of tradition, the trend of modern ideas,and above all the standard of values of the people,a little more clearly than would be possible from other viewpoints. At the outset the author wishes to disclaim any suggestion that this is a history of the provincial architecture. Such a project would be quite beyond the scope of a work of this size, and would necessitate in many cases a different selection of examples. In the school and domestic architecture, it is true, the architectural development has been traced, but only with the object of demonstrating the development of new ideas and influences. In such cases truly typical examples have been selected. In other cases, such, for example as the modern office building, the example is hardly typical, but is selected because it shows very clearly the trend of certain modern ideas.