comfortable race of small farmers established in the valley of the Thames, and would hear of similar conditions about the Wye and the Severn. But he would be struck by the almost empty look of the wide pastoral stretches in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and would find axemen struggling with Nature in the forest of Arden, where dense thickets would still cover the whole of Warwickshire and spread over into the neighbouring counties. Arrived at Liverpool after a twelve hours’ journey, he might wish to visit Dublin or Glasgow, the only two other considerable towns in the British Islands; the one about as large as York now is, the other the size of Northampton. He would be informed by the Government tourist agent in Liverpool that his easiest way to Glasgow would be by sea to a landing-place in the Solway Firth, where he would find the southern terminus of the Scotch railways. He would discover that England and Scotland were not yet linked by rail, though that great step in progress was confidently looked for within a few months. [Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF LAKE TE-ANAU] By all this I do not mean to suggest that there are no spots in New Zealand where the modern side of rural English life is already closely reproduced. On an earlier page I have said that there are. Our country life differs widely as you pass from district to district, and is marked by as much variety as is almost everything else in the islands. On the east coast of the South Island, between Southland and the Kaikouras, mixed farming is scientifically carried on with no small expenditure of skill and capital. The same can be said of certain districts on the west coast of the Wellington Province, and in the province of Hawkes Bay, within a moderate distance of the town of Napier. Elsewhere, with certain exceptions, farming is of a rougher and more primitive-looking sort than anything seen in the mother country, though it does not follow that a comparatively rough, unkempt appearance denotes lack of skill or agricultural knowledge. It may mean, and usually does mean, that the land is in the earlier stages of settlement, and that the holders have not yet had time to think much of appearances. Then outside the class of small or middle-sized farms come the large holdings of the islands, which are like nothing at all in the United Kingdom. They are of two kinds, freehold and Crown lands held under pastoral licences. Generally speaking, the freeholds are much the more valuable, have much more arable land, and will, in days to come, carry many more people. The pastoral Crown tenants have, by the pressure of land laws and the demands of settlement, been more and more restricted to the wilder and more barren areas of the islands. They still hold more than ten million acres; but this country chiefly lies in the mountainous interior, covering steep faces where the plough will never go, and narrow terraces and cold, stony valleys where the snow lies deep in winter.