8 Mr. J. T. Noble Anderson on Municipal Progress and 



These are, it is true, the privileges of the town inhabitant, 

 whose wages are high and whose holidays are compulsory and 

 frequent. But on the other hand most of the money is earned in 

 the country. Here were shown pictures of the work in the fields 

 and the forest. And the country " dirt roads," with the carts 

 bringing the milk to the creamery or butter factory were con- 

 trasted with the magnificent streets and immense cold storage 

 markets of Melbourne. 



NEW ZEALAND. 



Then the lecturer displayed a large number of views of New 

 Zealand scenery. Some of the West Coast Sounds bore a 

 remarkable resemblance to the Fiords of Norway, only that the 

 glacier clad mountains were not only higher but also steeper and 

 more graceful in outline than any in the Scandinavian peninsula, 

 while the great lake district recalled Switzerland, except that the 

 lakes are larger and the scenery generally more open and 

 expansive. 



The photographs were unusually clear in outline, a circumstance 

 which he attributed to the extreme dryness of the atmosphere, 

 described as bracing and " invigorating as wine." As an 

 example, Mount Cook, the Mount Blanc of New Zealand, can 

 be clearly seen in all seasons of the year for a distance of 150 

 miles. 



Turning then to works in New Zealand, these are naturally of 

 a very different character from those in Australia. The railways 

 and roads call for great feats of engineering and skill, as witness 

 the photographs he showed of bridges across steep gorges and 

 tunnels under great mountain ranges, with centre rail tracks 

 where special locomotives haul ordinary trains up gradients of 1 

 in 15. From a municipal standpoint, the chief difference between 

 New Zealand and Australia lies in the fact that New Zealand has 

 4 or 5 competing sea ports, and consequently has 5 centres, all 

 within 200 or 300 miles of each other, and no one of which 

 directly serves a larger area than say Dublin. 



Owing too, to the rugged nature of the greater part of the country, 



