PARK-PROUD CITY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 55, 14 September 1928, Page 10

PARK-PROUD CITY

CHRISTCHURCH LUNGS SERMONS IN TREE AND STONE HYBRIDISATION FEATS What is there to do in Christchurch when you havo come down from Wellington to write up the arrival of a trans-Tasman flyer, whose flight, for weather reasons, has been indefinitely postponed? That was tho question one day last week, when Christchurch was at its spring-like best. While Wellington was enjoying bad weather, and Tasman conditions were holding up tho Southern Cross, Christchurch, in striking contrast, had day after day of perfect sunshine with atmosphere bracing to warm. A Northerner whose principal recollection of the city was the snowdrifts in the streets in the winter of 1904, when Canterbury met BedellSivright's British Rugby team on whito-draped Lancaster Park, could hardly believe that Christchurch could produce such spring weather. However, there it was, and the question was how to make the most of it. BRETHREN OF THE CAMERA. An attempt to enlist the sympathy of a knight of the camera, one of the oldest and most experienced Press photographers in New Zealand, and likewise dependent on tho vagaries of the Southern Cross, was entirely successful. In these days of pictures, when newspapers as well as film theatres are reaching their supporters through tho eye as much as through the reading mechanism, the photographer has become universal and übiquitous. A Press photographer often has a wider range of activities up and down New Zealand than has a Press writer; is more in demand at distant places; knows more localities and more people. Tho camera squadron is the flying squadron, the mobile section. Sometimes it is "the flying squadron" in more senses than one, for many a good bird's-eye photograph has been obtained at no little cost in skill and daring by a camera man riding on a wind-cutting airplane. We of tho earth know not the complexities of the fathomless blue (meaning not sea but sky). On a certain historic occasion, in the days when camera facilities in airplanes were not what they aro to-day, wo had not tiie privilege of seeing our knight, of tho camera hang on by his eyebrows while straining for a better spooling angle, nor did we hear him plead with a reluctant, pilot for a little extra tilt. But although thero may bo less occasion now for risk when the camera man goes aloft, it is still an arduous calling requiring skill and pluck. The mounting of a cinematograph in an airplane appears to be an art in itself, and tho preliminaries are as important as the tuning-up of the engine. v A CITY WITH ELBOW-ROOM. But tho quest immediately iv hand being terrestrial rather than aerial, our guide (also philosopher) used his knowledgs of men and things in a less risky sphere, and led the way to Hagloy Park and the Domain and the Botanic Gardens and the fishponds. After an entrancing walk through—it is early blos-som-time in Christchurch—one is not quite sure where all these several places begin and end, since they are more or less contiguous. That factor, however, hardly matters, since the outstanding impression formed by a Wellington man is tho magnificence of this endowment of hundreds of acres of beautiful flat land right in the heart of the city, traversed by the Avon and adorned with a thousand natural beauties. Contrast such a public playground with Wellington's eternal fight with tho hills for more flat space —a levelling process carried on so -expensively that one is not surprised to hear that all these park privileges of Christchurch are enjoyed at a less annual cost in reserves expenditure than is paid by the ratepayers of the Capital City. Stately groves of deciduous trees, whose beauties are yet to unfold, divide open plots, dedicated to various sports—among them an archery ground which has, it seems, like the old archery ground in Molesworth street, Wellington, ceased to resound to the twang of the crossbow. Our guide knew where tho Observatory was to be found, also its presiding genius, Mr. W. F. Skey, who is one of those meteorologists holding a confident opinion as to the future importance of airplanes in commercial transport. After that, contact was made with tho winter garden and the rosery, also with tiie Royal commemoration trees and tho fishponds. A strong "October the First" feeling was developed on seeing tho rings and ripples on the ponds and pondlets, as trout ranging from four pounds downwards broke the surface in savage rises. What a pandemonium would have broken out in that over-populated pond if a four-pounder had found himself in contact with a 3x cast—which, of course, would havo been sacrilege, worso than a Sunday arrival of the Southern Cross. The chief interest, however, is not in the larger fish—magnificent picture though they make —but in the far-famed hybrid yearlings which Mr. Dave Hope has produced from rainbow' and brown. Fast, clever fish they looked in the water, and well able to take care of themselves. But will they breed? Piscatorial gossip is that they probably will not, and that they give no evidence of reproductive powers. This opinion, however, is offered for what it is worth, and not on the responsibility of tho authorities, who wero temporarily absent when the call at the fishponds was made. Whether tho hybrid proves reproductive or not, it represents in itself a triumph, and Mr. Hope, in raising it, is said to havo done something not on record anywhere else in the world. Another temporary lodger tit Mr. Hope's boarding-house is a big speckled kiwi, the largest tho writer has seen, and one of the liveliest. WINTER GARDEN AND ROSERY. ■Thero is yet space to say a few words of that other and more widely appealing achievement, the Winter Garden. The fern-house at Wellington Botanic Gardens would have to be magnified very many times to give somo idea of the main building with its architectural merits and internal treasures. A botanist alone could do justice to the magnificent Strelitzia iiugusta and other lofty tropical and sub-tropical growths, and to their smaller but not less wonderful neighbours. Under hothouse conditions the flora of many parts of the world can bo gathered together, annihilating distances and climatic differences, and such an exhibition is a worthy object of civic pride. Mr. Jas Young, the curator, piloted the visitors through fern-nooks (featuring, incidentally, New Zealand's . todea suporba), bougainvillias, and jessamines, to an upper floor and thence to an exterior balcony overlooking the open-air rose-garden, which is modelled on that of the Duchess of Sutherland iv Hertfordshire. And his conversation brought to light a discovery of perhaps as much biological interest as tho hybrid trout, viz., tho sporting-back of -the Loinbardy poplar to the Black Italian poplar from which it sprang. Mr. Young stated that populus fastigtita (Lombardy poplar) was in the first place a sport from populus dilitata (a form of the Black Italian poplar), and lie had observed some time ago in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens that a

fastigata had reverted in part to the parent form dilitata. From the branch of the tree showing this reversion lie had boon able to reproduce (by cuttings) trees of dilitata. Dr. Hill, Director of Kew, had lately written to him stating that this was the only case of the kind on record. All the above matters of interest, and much more that must go unrecorded, were brought within the scope of a two hours' walk. On the way back to the city, past all those wonderful educational buildings in grey, impressive stone, the thought recurred that Christehurch in springtime has much to offer, and that visitors who came at the first false alarm and saw no Southern Cross were nevertheless by no means unrewarded.