emperate Zone.]

In the month of February, when the rata flowers in the Alps, there are
valleys which are ablaze for miles with

"Flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem
To set the hills on fire."

But the most gorgeous of all flowering trees, as distinguished from
creepers, is the sea-loving pohutu kawa. When the wind is tossing its
branches the contrast is startling between its blood-red flowers and
the dark upper side and white, downy under side of its leaves.

Like the Australians, New Zealand Colonists call their forest "bush."
What in England might be called bush or brushwood is called "scrub" in
the Colonies.

The wood of many of the trees is not only useful timber, but when cut
and polished is often beautiful in grain. Unhappily, their destruction
goes on with rapid strides. The trees, as is usually the case with
those the wood of which is hard, grow slowly. They feel exposure to
wind, and seem to need the society and shelter of their fellows. It is
almost impossible to restore a New Zealand forest when once destroyed.
Then most of the finest trees are found on rich soil. The land is
wanted for grazing and cultivation. The settler comes with axe and
fire-stick, and in a few hours unsightly ashes and black funereal
stumps have replaced the noble woods which Nature took centuries
to grow. No attempt is made to use a great part of the timber. The
process is inevitable, and in great part needful, frightfully wasteful
as it seems. But the forest reserves of the Colony, large as they are,
should be made even more ample. Twelve hundred thousand acres are not
enough--as the New Zealanders will regretfully admit when a decade or
so hence they begin to import timber instead of exporting it. As for
interfering with reserves already made, any legislator who suggests
it should propose his motion with a noose round his neck, after the
laudable custom followed in a certain classic republic.

New Zealand is by no means a flat country, though there are in it some
fair-sized plains, one of which--that of Canterbury--is about as flat
a stretch of one hundred miles as is to be found in the world. On the
whole, however, both North and South Islands are lands of the mountain
and the flood, and not only in this, but in the contour of some of
their peaks and coast-line, show more than a fanciful resemblance to
the west of Scotland. But the New Zealand mountains are far loftier
than anything i