92 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



wax-eyes have been very abundant on the trees, searching 

 up and down the branches for minute insects, and clearing 

 out the blight. A correspondent records nearly the same 

 birds as visiting his garden in Oamaru, with the very 

 interesting addition of the wood-robin, a bird which he 

 would gladly see increasing once more. 



IT. 



Many visitors to and residents in Dunedin find fault with 

 our climate as changeable and trying, and if one were here 

 only to live an out-door life of sight-seeing and picnicing, 

 the charge might be a true one. But for a fine working 

 climate, in which one can be busy nearly all the year rovind 

 with a minimum of inconvenience, there could be no better 

 climate, and its very changefulness may have its charms. 

 Those -who have lived in a dry tropical or sub-tropical 

 region know how monotonous the very sunshine becomes, 

 when the sky day after day and month after month is 

 as burnished brass, and the eye aches for a patch of vivid 

 green or the shadow of a great rock in a dry and thirsty 

 land. They can appreciate the feelings of the Indian 

 civilian on his way to the homeland, when the vessel in 

 which he was voyaging up the English Channel ran into 

 a thick wetting mist, as he rubbed his hands together and 

 exclaimed, "Ah ! this is the weather for me ; none of your 



blue skies ! " But, indeed, our climate is not more 



changeable than some others with which it is often un- 

 favourably compared. In all my experience of Dunedin 

 weather I never experienced such sharp alterations of 

 temperature as are common in Australia. What makes 

 our changes here so noticeable is that the atmosphere is 

 so frequently nearly saturated with water vapour that a 

 fall in temperature of 10 causes a great amount of con- 

 densation with formation of cloud. The occurrence of so 

 much high and rugged ground in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of Dunedin, while it is the cause of most of the 

 romantic beauty of its surroundings, is also responsible 

 for much of the moisture which characterises the atmo- 

 sphere here. 



