GIFT OF PARK LANDS.

Wairarapa Age, 12 March 1934, Page 5

GIFT OF PARK LANDS.

ADDITIONS TO NEW PLYMOUTH AREA. PROPERTIES HANDED OVER. NEW PLYMOUTH, March 10. The beautiful Brooklands estate of sixty acres of! the late Mr. Newton King, together with seven and a half acres of unspoiled native bush given to the town by Messrs T. C. List and C. A. Wilkinson, MP., was formally handed over to-day. The chief speech was made by Lord Bledisloe. Brookiands, which has been given to the town by the trustees of the King’s Estate in lieu of a cash bequest of £lO,OOO and other gift land have been added to PuHekura Park, which is adjoining, making a public park whose beauty, Lord Bledisloe said, was without peer In the Dominion. The estate comprises extensive lawns, flower gardens, glass houses, native bush and lakes. It contains in addition, a magnificent puriri tree said to be 2000 years old and a huge spreading Spanish chestnut, beneath which an area is enclosed as in a great greenhouse. In the presence of several thousand people, with the gardens bathed in sunshine, speeches were made by Sir Truby King on behalf of the family; the Mayor, Mr. E. R. C. Gilmour; Mr. James McLeod, chairman of the Phrk Board; Mr. 8. G. Smith, M.P., and Lord Bledisloe. Go-vernor-General. Lord Bledisloe spoke eloquently of the beauty of the flora and fauna of New Zealand and appealed for their preservation. They were, he said, a source of tremendous value to the country in the future as attractions to the tourist who must come in hundreds of thousands and bring greater wealth to the Dominion than any of other great industries. Whoever felled a giant native tree or needlessly destroyed native bush destroyed an aesthetic asset of untold potential vain* Lord Bledisloe was presented with*a souvenir album of views of Brooklands and Pukekura Park, which he as photographer said he had never Seen equalled.—(PA.)