Something Novel To Make.

Dear Trainlanders,—

You remember we talked about holiday geography last April. Now here is something about garden geography!

In the Christchurch Public Gardens there is a rock garden map of New Zealand. It is an island, about twenty-five feet long, set in an ornamental lake. Growing upon it are native shrubs. Mt. Cook and Mt. Egmont are two white-tipped rocks.

How fascinating it would be to build a map like this in your garden. No need to make it an island in a lake. Any small patch of ground would do just as well. Perhaps your teacher would let the class help you to make one in the school garden. Ferns could be planted on the West Coast, wheat and oats in Canterbury, tussocks on the hills, a tobacco plant in Nelson, a pohutakawa tree in Auckland, and so on. What happy hours you could spend decorating your map and planting rivers and lakes of white or blue flowers.

Now is the time to dig your garden and prepare the soil for your map. Then, later in the year, it will be admired by all who see it.

If you are very clever you might be able to fix up railway tracks over which to run your model trains.

Write and tell us what other things you will put in your map of New Zealand!

Every best wish from

Yours in Trainland,

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Standing On The Centre Of New Zealand.

When the surveyors told the Nelson people that the exact centre of New Zealand was on the hilltop behind the park, they said: “Really! Just fancy that! We must put a seat there to let our visitors sit down and look at it.”

But it is said that the visitors soon wore away the seat by carving their names on it! So nowadays there is a concrete slab instead. However, there are plenty of other seats around the hillside to rest upon, and once the hilltop is reached there is a glorious view of Nelson and the sea below.

On fine days, Mt. Egmont, at New Plymouth, may be seen. Can you guess how many hundred miles away from Nelson that is?

Now, Nelson you know, is where the apples grow. Sunny Nelson it is called, and how the sun shines! It makes the cicadas sing all day long and on into the night they trill. There are trees everywhere, and over the green hills puffy white clouds are piled up against the bright blue skies.

One end of the main street leads to the sea and the other end leads to the hill on which rise flights of steps leading to the cathedral gleaming amidst the trees like silver.

Outside the town the roads are lined with tobacco plantations. The tobacco leaves are cut, strung and dried in the sun or by artificial heat. Tobacco plantations are rapidly taking the place of hop gardens. Hop vines grow in rows, on strings, about 13ft. high. The hops themselves are curly light green cones over an inch long and are dried in kilns.

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Distinguished Work.

Many of you older girls and boys will have heard something about the valuable experimental work being done at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson by some of our leading scientists. They have been the means of making previously useless lands profitable, and doing away with tree and fruit diseases by treating them with certain chemicals, or by introducing insects from other lands to attack the pests.

In many country fields are little flags and tags marking out the soils on which they are experimenting.

The Cawthron Institute, which is set on a hill, is used mainly as a hospital for helping Mother Nature in the care of her sick and sometimes unruly offspring.

By the way, Thomas Cawthron, the founder of the Institute, who earned his thousands of pounds in New Zealand and gave most of it back again for the good of New Zealand, arrived in this land as a frail youth with scarcely a penny to his name.

At present, in the “bug house” of the Institute, they are carrying out experiments with a foreign insect and hoping that it will be the means of wiping out the earwig pest. Living in a few small bamboo canes, in a case, they have over 7,000 earwigs for the experiments.

It is fascinating to watch minute insects and their habits under a microscope.

The exhibition room is a miniature museum. In it there are two pieces of old china valued at £1,000, dainty dresden teasets, cases of gorgeous butterflies, and many strange looking growths bottled up.

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A Queer Fish.

Have you ever seen a lamprey? In this exhibition room there is one preserved in spirits. It is white, and looks like an eel. Lampreys are found in sandy, shallow places in rivers. They get their food by sucking the blood from other fishes. At the time of breeding, a white lump like a goitre develops in the male lamprey. The use is unknown, but it is suggested that it might be used for removing stones when nest building.