GLIMPSES AT THE DOMAIN.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 221, 30 August 1878, Page 3

GLIMPSES AT THE DOMAIN.

To the Editor of the Akaroa Mail.

Sir, —" Dulce est pro patria Morey " — particularly on behalf of the Domain Reserve. A squirt, inserted in a clump of cobble stones, fed by an hydraulic ram, and feebly hiccupping up a jet of one-half the volume and one twentieth the strength of the ordinary gasogene. This is the first dulce with which he has disfigured the face of Nature. Perhaps that face was not trim and snug before this rampant vandalism was introduced ; but at any rate it was neither bizarre nor vulgar. The next thing we shall see wiil be a superstructure of oyster-shells, and the smiling architect begging us to " remember the grotto." Without the absurdity, but with all the bad taste of the "/o_s Bandusice splendidior vitro " above noticed, stands in bold relief a sort of tea shed, apparently— it can't be called a bower—an excrescence which one would have thought the united vulgarity of all the Yahoos in Europe could not have devised—without symmetry of outline, beauty of design, or harmony of color. The only associations which it suggests are fetid onions, red cotton handkerchiefs, and the neglected H. Surely, if the arrangement of our gardens cannot be superintended by .an educated gentleman, let it at least be entrusted to the taste of a decently intelligent gardener.—Yours, &c,