Waikato's Fairy Mountain.

The New Zealand Government has recently set apart as permanent reserves for the preservation of native fauna and flora the groups of islands constituting the Auckland Islands and the Kermadec group. That is an excellent measure; but there are some places within our mainland limits that stand in far greater need of protection, especially for the sake of the forests. Pre-eminently one of those in urgent need of the sheltering mana of the Crown is that beautiful mountain, Pirongia, famed in poetic fairy folklore, which forms the dividing range between the Waipa Plains and Kawhia harbour. Pirongia rises to three thousand feet, and it was at one time covered almost to the base of its manyvalleyed slopes with a dense and lovely bush.

In one's young days, Pirongia was the most commanding feature of the old home landscape; it was a grand place for pigeon shooting in the era when there were a great plenty of native birds and no restrictions on sport and pot-hunting. Now the bush has been stripped from a great part of the ancient mountain, and the clearing process has not yet been stayed. It is saddening to see this gradual ruin of the finest thing in all the Waikato country. It is not merely a matter of scenery. Pirongia is a range of great value for climatic and water-supply and conservation purposes.

Now a belated but welcome effort is being made to save it from further destruction and to make it a National Park or sanctuary. That is the only method likely to preserve the forest on the upper parts. If the whole of the mountain that has not already passed into private hands were reserved, there would be a field then open for the replanting of some of the lower parts. One would like to see all lovers of the forest and the forest life, as well as all local bodies in the Waikato, unite in a call to save historic and beautiful old Pirongia.