FRUIT-GROWING IN THE NORTH.

Otago Witness, Issue 1892, 15 May 1890, Page 9

FRUIT-GROWING IN THE NORTH.

WHANGAREI.

The interest a tourist from the Seuth may be supposed to have in a visit to Whangarei may be said to be twofold. On the one hand, the lover of the romantic and the beautiful will find in the scenery around Whangarei and its approaches enough to gratify his tastes ; and, on the other, he who delights in viewing the kindly fruits of the earth, fostered by the hand of man, will be much gratified by a visit to the orange groves and grape houses of this eminently fruitgrowing district. It is of this latter phase I shall speak now ; on another occasion, perhaps, I may fill in a few features of the outline already given of a journey through the " fac North."

The very first thing that strikes a stranger from the South on approaching Whan gar ci is the great number of glass houses. Everywhere one looks one ia sure to find a large proportion of these houses dotting the view. That means "grapes," and "grapes" at Whangarei mean "black Hamburgs." The first time I saw Wfaangarei I thought of Otago— it might puzzle anyone to see how, for no two places on earth could be more different. Nearly 40 years ago I rode through the then unknown and unmapped interior of Otago, and as my eye wandered with delight over her vast rolling hills and plains of natural grass, I said to the man who accompanied me—" This is indeed a splendid grazing country. Some day in the near future these hills will be covered with the herds and flocks of wealthy men." " Ah, sir," he replied, with a sigh, " it is not a good grazing country I want to see, but a good elazing one— glass is what I want, not grass." Mr Shaw, the then landlord of the Commercial Hotel, Dunedin, be it understood, was a painter and glazier by trade ; and I could not help thinking had he been with me at Whangarei he would have been satisfied that he had at last arrived in a country where there was plenty of glass. Further on the next prominent feature is the orange, Everywhere, in every little garden, you see specimens of this beautiful tree with its yellow fruit, and along the roads larger groves, where the trees grow dark, glassy-green, loaded with the golden bulbs, the straight rows standing out clear and distinct on the dark red of the volcanic soil, which, being kept' perfectly clean, affords no green weed to break the regularity of the scene. Of other and more ordinary fruits there are endless varieties and great quantities, and there are many products that one does not see in the more Southern districts which give a distinctive character to the neighbourhood. Altogether a visitor from the colder South is greatly impressed with the idea that he has arrived in a country some other than the Naw Zealand he has known. The soenery within the heads has almost convinced him he was on the 'Rhine ; the orange groves breathe the breath of Italy or Florida. He sees the date plum, and the persimmon of Japan, the tea plant of China, the arrowroot of Bermuda, the ginger and spices of India, the vines of sunny France ; and when his thoughts are of the East and the tropics he turns and beholds trees loaded with the fruits of colder climes— the apple, the pear, the plum, and oherry— and he realises that the soil and climate of Whangarei form a fitting home for all the varied fruits of the earth, and that the New Zealand of the future may yet be one of the greatest fruitgrowing countries on the face of the globe. Nor is it that all these varied products may be said merely to exist in their adopted home, but they flourish, and without any undue labonr and fertilisation they produce abundantly " each after its own kind."

It has always seemed to me peculiar that a country so markedly well adapted to the production of fruit should have been created without any native fruit-producing vegetation whatever at all worthy of the name ; that miles and miles of naked hill and rolling plain, where nothing grows bat the brown fern or the stunted ti-tree, should possess all the elements both in soil and climate for the riohest fruits, and still that Nature should have left to the hand of man to sow the seed that yields so fair a crop. On another occasion we must try to give some idea of the increasing value of our Northern Garden of Eden.

Obchardist.