Here is a sneak preview of what the third edition cover will look like. We hope you like the new cover art. The green item on the front is a pounamu hei matau (a stylized fishing hook). Pounamu is the Maori word for New Zealand greenstone. The mineral, which is technically either a nephrite jade, bowenite, or serpentinite stone, is found in the South Island (Te Waipounamu) of New Zealand (Aotearoa). Maori have ownership over all deposits of pounamu in New Zealand. It has been traditionally used for tools such as chisels (whao) and adzes (toki), fishing hooks and lures, and bird leg rings (kākā poria); weapons such as mere (short handled clubs); and ornaments such as pendants (hei-tiki, hei matau and pekapeka), ear pendants, and cloak pins (Source: Wikipedia). We chose this because we wanted something that represented New Zealand and also that was green — green to set the new edition apart from the first (purple) and second (brown) editions.

Gareth Campbell, a former PhD student of James’, studied pounamu and in particular, whether we can statistically distinguish pounamu from different locations in New Zealand using measurements of the concentrations of various chemical elements.