I/O A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



T 



Chapter XII. October. 



T. 



HE early settlers in this colony greatly missed that is, 

 those who had eyes for such things the change of the 

 seasons which marked the year in the land of their birth, 

 and which helped so greatly to diversify their life in the old 

 home. They noticed here that the weather got colder as 

 the Autumn waned and the Winter came on, and again as 

 the days lengthened there was the gradual increase in 

 warmth ; but the erratic nature of our climate, which often 

 gives us an Indian summer in mid-winter and then freezes 

 us up in the middle or end of Spring, took away from the 

 sharpness of the impression, and Nature helped but little 

 to deepen it. The native bush does grow duller in its 

 sombre green as the old leaves lose their freshness, and on 

 the other hand some of the trees put on a fresh flush of 

 foliage as the sun's rays come more directly down on them ; 

 but old New Zealand shows little signs of a real spring 

 time. The deeper bush is just about as beautiful in 

 mid-winter as in Summer, the ferns and mosses are nearly 

 as fresh and green. The chief difference is that the ground 

 is wetter and colder. But as cultivation and tree planting 

 have spread in this new land, and as gardens have been 

 increased, so the signs of the seasons are becoming more 

 marked, and with this change there comes a greater- 

 diversity in our views and aspects of life. It is said to be 

 one of the charms of American rural life that the changes 

 of the seasons are so sharply marked, and it is eqiially 

 one of the drawbacks of a residence in the tropics that 

 the monotony even of its luxuriant vegetation palls on 

 the senses. 



This fact of an increasingly well-marked Spring season 

 has come home to many of us during the fine weather which 

 prevailed during the greater part of last month. It has 



