OUR WONDERLAND.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3113, 8 February 1879, Page 4

OUR WONDERLAND.

A Chicagosn, Bays an American contemporary, who has recently returned from Australia and New Zealand, says: —"JNew Zealand is a wonderland. As you sail towaids it there arises before you a black, and to all appearances unbroken, wall of stone. It is a volcanic island;; and the coast is very rough and'dangerous. Yet Auckland has the most beautiful harbor my eyes have ever rested upon. The vegetation is very strange and beautiful. I have seen ferns twenty and tweniy-'fire feet high, with magnificent fronds." The fern growth is marvellously luxuriant. There is about 150 varieties, and some of them the oddest abapesimßginable. One kind, with a very delicate lavender liuf, is singularly handsome. There ficems to be no depth to tbe soil, either of the island or the continent. I have seen soil— black muck soil —twenty feet deep, and tliey told n>e that up tbe country 5f ire -many immense downs wheretwenlyfive feet was tlbe slverage. It is impossible to over caiculfite the productive capacity of such ground as that. Tbe birds are nearly all sougless, though they have the most br lliant plumage. Most of them are quiet all day, but as soon as night falls the woods are ringing wish Ibeir harsh, discordant cries. In fact, the continent is in many respects what you might call a looking glass country—for ever) thing seems to be reversed in it. The north is warm, the south is cold; day is quiet and night is full of :life; they have a bird without wings and four-footed animals with beaks. But the humans are right-end up and wide awake, and, unless I'm much mistaken, they will make a country of it that the world will stand amazed at." The above is rather a "mixed" account, and although the writer has apparently a fair idea of the distinctive features of Australia and New Zealand, his last flattering remarks probably apply to both.