274 DICKSON ON 



partially, are even finer. I have never experienced any month 

 in New Zealand equal in settled splendour and sunny serenity 

 to the Indian summer of America. I should fancy there is no 

 entire season in New Zealand equal to the luxurious softness 

 and young brilliancy of an Italian spring ; and perhaps no 

 whole month equal to a fine old English June. There is too 

 much cloudy windy weather in New Zealand to entitle us to 

 say that it has a sunny, serene climate, and the southern 

 coasts are subject to storms of cold rain and furious wind 

 (' Southerly Bursters'), which are probably equal in their way 

 to anything in the world. 



"Nevertheless, the climate of New Zealand is substan- 

 tially a good climate, and has not been so much over-praised as 

 badly praised. More frost, less wind and rain, would make it 

 perfection ; but as it is, all this may be truly said of it 

 that it is a climate favourable alike to the preservation of 

 robust health and to the improvement of weak health ; a 

 climate most congenial to all pastoral and agricultural pur- 

 suits ; one in which every English domestic animal thrives and 

 fattens, and in which every English grain, grass, fruit, and 

 flower attains full development and perfection. 



" No art can make a bad climate good, but art can make 

 any climate better. The cultivation of a new country 

 materially improves its climate. Damp and dripping forests, 

 exhaling pestilential vapours from rank and rotten vegetation, 

 fall before the axe, and light and air get in, and sunshine, 

 ripening goodly plants. Fen and marsh, and swamp, the 

 bittern's domains, fertile only in miasm, are drained, and the 

 plough converts them into wholesome plains of fruit and grass, 

 and grain. When Cesar's legions chased the painted savages 

 along the shores of Kent, many a deadly Pontine marsh held 

 the place of what is now a champaign country of orchards, 

 corn, and cattle ; and the primeval climate of Albion probably 

 mowed down more of the invaders than did the scythed 



