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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 80a

Climate and General Description

Climate and General Description.

These two islands then—the North and South Islands of New Zealand—are nearly as large as Great Britain and Ireland, which contain 121,000, while New Zealand contains 104,000 square miles, and occupy a somewhat similar position in latitude in the Southern Hen isphere that Great Britain does in the Northern one. The actual latitude of New Zealand is nearer that of Southern France and Spain—Dunedin, the chief town in the South, being about the latitude of Lyons, in France; Auckland, the chief town in the North, being about the latitude of Lisbon, in Portugal—but the insular position of the country modifies the temperature. Of course, being in the Southern Hemisphere, the North part is the warmer, and the South part the colder. Being islands there are never any very great extremes of heat or cold. In the extreme North oranges and lemons, figs, olives, and quinces grow well. Snow is never seen in the North Island except on the mountain tops. It rarely falls, except on the mountains, in the South Island. Sometimes there are four or five winters in succession without snow on the low lands, and when it does fall it rarely lasts more than a few hours. The writer has been in Dunedin, in the South Island, for twenty years, and only remembers two snowstorms when the snow lay two days on the ground in the town, although on the hills in the suburbs it lay ten days or so. Of course in a climate like that sheep, horses, and cattle live out of doors without shelter and thrive splendidly. There is an ample, but not excessive rainfall, except in the heavily-timbered and almost uninhabited parts of the west coast of the South Island A high range of mountains runs through the middle of the South Island which breaks the rain clouds that accompany the strong westerly winds that blow at intervals in the winter, and stores them page 8 up in the shape of snow to feed all summer the many streams that flow through the fertile valleys on the East Coast.

The North Island is warmer than the South Island and more adapted for sub-tropical fruit growing. Oranges and lemons flourish in the far North, and apples are cultivated to a considerable extent, although we believe the warm interior valleys of the South Island would grow deciduous fruits to greater advantage on account of the sharp frosts which occur in those parts in the winter. Walnuts thrive well in the North, and are a profitable fruit to cultivate, while the favourable conditions of a combination of warmth and moisture give a luxurious growth of grass, even on comparatively poor soil, and for dairy farming, sheep and cattle raising, and horse breeding, the North Island cannot be excelled; while for all-round agriculture, such as requires a climate and soil suitable for wheat, oats, turnips and barley, it would be hard to beat the South Island.

The accompaniment of a mild climate with sufficient rainfall, with neither scorching heat nor freezing cold, makes New Zealand, as a whole, pre-eminently a land of green grass and running water like the land of promise. "A land of hills and valleys that drinketh of the rain of heaven," and surely for its British rule we may finish the verse and say, "a land that the Lord thy God careth for, for the eyes of the Lord thy God are upon it from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year." And, as a whole, it is especially adapted to carrying on with great success all those operations of mixed husbandry that are so suitable to the English home-life, and which will some day make New Zealand worthy of the name of the Britain of the South.