Planning and Planting the Gardens.

Another point may be urged. These garden plants and shrubs, beautiful though they are, may be quite familiar to the visitor, and he has probably heard of New Zealand's wealth of ferns and of the fine plants peculiar to the country. Yet he fails to see them on his arrival, or in the cities he usually visits. There are plenty of ferns hardy enough to be grown at any railway station in New Zealand; at New Plymouth and other places in the North Island they grow luxuriantly, and it would be easy to arrange them at the stations so as to give the same impression as that conveyed to the tourist by the illustrations he has doubtless seen in the guide books descriptive of the beauties of New Zealand. Naturally the railway gardens must be planned and planted with due regard to the climatic and other local conditions of the situation. At mountain stations, such as Arthur's Pass and Otira, some of the “mountain lilies” (Ranunculus Lyallii), Ourisias, Ratas, and shrub by Olearias, could be grown and, at the proper season, blooms from these could be offered to visiting botanists and others specially interested in the vegetation of New Zealand.