CHRISTMAS CHURCH DECORATIONS

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1203, 11 January 1878, Page 3

CHRISTMAS CHURCH DECORATIONS

" P," the good-humored contributor to the Nelson " Mail," writes: —Editors of newspapers have their troubles occasionally like other men. Let me relate the latest instance of this that has come under my notice. An acquaintance of mine, who is a member of that profession, actuated by the laudable desire to give a full, true, and particular account of the Christmas decorations of the churches in and around Nelson, and at the game time being painfully conscious of his own inability to be in more than one place at a time, invited certain trustworthy friends to provide him with that which unassisted he was powerless to obtain. In some respects he was thoroughly successful, but in one instance he was guilty of the unpardonable blunder of forgetting that his appointed deputy was a devotee to the science of botany, and that to him it would be almost equivalent to sacrilege to call a flower by any other than its scientific name. He did not awake to the error he had committed on the day after Christmas there was put into his hands the following description o,f the decorations of a' church a few hundred yards from a railway station i<ot five miles from Jfelson : —"The diehotoinously branched leaves of the gracefully imbricated Lycopodium Billiavdieri formed a beautiful contrast to the pendulous leaves of the lustrous Freycinctia Bankeii, the rhizomes of the one being intertwined with the branchlets of the other's more arborescent foliage. Conspicuous at the angles rose Grothic-like arches formed by the Areca sapida, whilo Europe and New Zealand were united by the combination of the pclargonia* with sprigs of Pittosporum eugenoides, the Bcarlot blossoms of the former standing out brilliantly against the glabrousJJ foliation, oi the latter, the fairest of the varied shrv.ba of the Southern Flora. The Arundo oonspioua was freely represented, the panicles not being so dill use ao is generally the oase at this season, but still maintaining the reputation for decorative purposes of that noble grass. No Christmas ornamentations would be complete without texts, which were rendered very legibly with the coriaceous leaves of the Ilex aquifolium." When last I saw the unhappy editor to whom this \ery intelligible communication was addressed, he was rushing off to his lawyer's in a most excited manner with the intention of instructing him to bring an action against his correspondent for damages for libel upon the fern, llowers, and grasses, to which he had applied such horrible names. Since then I have heard that he has determined to be more cautious' £p# the iufcure at his choice of corresponding friends.