io My New Zealand Garden 



well as difficult to purchase. The stone is 

 extremely hard to cut, which makes small orna- 

 ments made of it very expensive, but it is very 

 pretty when mounted. 



Maoriland hedgerows are calculated to dis- 

 appoint a new-comer, for they deserve no praise 

 whatever. They are entirely lacking in Violets 

 and Primroses, and offer only a meagre selection 

 of wild-flowers ; but such glories belong to old- 

 established banks, of course. Many of our fences 

 are planted with gorse, so have no further attrac- 

 tion when their sweet-scented flowers are over. I 

 would like to collect in sacks all the spare flower- 

 seeds I could beg, borrow, or steal, and scatter our 

 hedgerows with them, and then see what happened. 

 I suppose one in a hundred might grow, and 

 perhaps even stand our long hot summers, when 

 banks must be purgatories to plant-roots. But if a 

 congenial spring favoured our sowings, it might 

 have a very happy result. It would be a pleasant 

 occupation for ' Arbor Day,' which was instituted 

 for tree-planting here, with some success for the 

 first year or two, and then dropped. Two sparrows 

 might be killed with the one stone by mixing a little 

 poisoned wheat with the flower-seeds. I should 

 like to do it ; but, to use my long uncle's favourite 

 quotation, ' The good that I would, I do not ; 

 and the evil that I would not, that I do.' Perhaps 



