new forests, and let fresh planting of suitable trees proceed contemporaneously with the cutting down of the original forests. Is this being sufficiently attended to? I doubt it. I see no signs of it. A few sparse patches of pine are being planted here and there, but nothing systematic or on an adequate scale seems yet to be attempted. But of this more anon.
The train now crosses the Waipawa River, and at Waipukura just such another river is crossed. These are typical New Zealand mountain streams. Here we have the explanation of the enormous shingle drifts on the coast. This is one of the gigantic operations of Nature, which alters the face of the earth, fills bays, changes coastlines, and puts at defiance the most skilful contrivances of the best engineers.
At present the rivers are mere shrunken threads winding through their desolate valleys of shingle. But in rainy seasons, or at the melting of the snow on yonder high serrated ridge of mountains, the torrents come tearing down the gullies and carry tons upon tons of silt and shingle and gravel with them; and the roar of the stones and boulders as they roll over each other and crash onwards in the bed of the flooded stream is louder than the angry surges on the tempestuous coast.
Still more trim pastures. A constantly rising, rolling country. The very perfection of land for pastures and stock-keeping. Wire fences by the
