88 A NEW- ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



Chapter VII. May. 



I. 



mENNYSON sings of 



-L " Autumn laying here and there 



A fiery finger on the leaves." 



How appropriate the figure has been this season, when the 

 fiery finger has been slow in coming and has left its mark 

 so long. Wherever the trees, so familiar and so dear to 

 many of us in the old northern home, have been planted 

 in this new land, the gold and russet tints have charmed 

 the eye for a month past. It needs a sharp frost or a 

 succession of frosts to drop the leaves quickly, but so far 

 on the hills at least there has been no frost, except a 

 slight touch yesterday morning. There has been, what 

 is less bearable than frost, a prevalence of cloudy weather 

 with bitterly cold southerly wind, but this does not check 

 vegetation so effectually as a drop of the temperature 

 below freezing point. My dahlias, though ragged, are 

 still quite green, and indeed are not quite done flowering, 

 and few things show the frost quicker than dahlias. This 

 morning their top leaves are blackened a little. 



Our earliest tree-planters here had a fancy for species of 

 E-ucalyptu-s, especially the blue gum (E. globulus), but 

 this tree is not much planted now, though the timber, even 

 of young specimens, can be more readily utilised than is 

 the case with many other trees. Then followed the age 

 of sombre coniferous trees, when Pinti^ insignia and 

 Cupressus macrocarpa were the universal favourites. 

 These trees have their place, and the latter, though often 

 short-lived, is a capital plant for a breakwind, as well as 

 a handsome tree when growing isolated. But fortunately 

 the taste for deciduous trees is spreading, and it is these 

 which at this time of year brighten a woodland landscape 

 with their varied tints. There are some fine clumps of 

 these trees in various parts of the Town Belt, and in the 

 gardens both of town and suburbs, and these have been 

 very beautiful of late. 



