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 in the British Islands. The rocky coasts as a rule rise up steeply from the ocean, standing out in many places in bold bluffs and high precipices. The seas round are not shallow, dull, or turbid, but deep, blue, wind-stirred, foam-flecked, and more often than not lit by brilliant sunshine. The climate and colouring, too, are not only essentially un-English, but differ very widely in different parts of the Islands. For New Zealand, though narrow, has length, stretching through 13 degrees of latitude, and for something like 1,100 miles from north to south. As might be looked for in a mountainous country, lying in the open ocean, the climate is windy, and except in two or three districts, moist. It is gloriously healthy and briskly cheerful. Summed up in one word, its prevailing characteristic is light!