CHRISTCHURCH CARNIVAL.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LV, Issue 8607, 15 November 1906, Page 6

CHRISTCHURCH CARNIVAL.

Retreat.

[By a Muster'on I 'isitor.) Without doubt, the most charming part of tho Exhibition is the fernery. The visitor from the back blocks or front blocks, however accustomed to the charms of new scenery, cannot help feeling delighted at the wealth of vegetation. There is not a withered leaf; everything is bright and green—a picture of robust vegetable growth. The green-tinted glass overhead and around enhances the effect. The rocks and walks are shaded with the prevailing hue, as if a fine moss had spread over them. It is difficult to conceive that this part of the attractions has been the work of only a few weeks. The walks are spacious, and, covered with concrete, are impervious to the moisture so plentiful everywhere. The rocks and caves, and cliffs over which the glittering cascades are tumbling, are composed of huge, well-rounded volcanic boulders. Treeferns and pongas, rising to a height of eight and ten feet, with their wide-spread-ing fronds, are of indescribable beauty. The symmetry, the variety, the robustness, of the various kinds and classes of ferns represented in this sylvan palace, no language can evrn faintly paint. Viewing the surroundings, huge masses of stone, among which mosses and lichens and ferns are growing so luxuriously, one can hardly imagine that he is in a place of recent creation, and not enjoying a well-shaded niche in the primeval forest near one of those reaches in the Wanganui river beyond Pip.riki. The change is so agreeable from the dusty city, with its foul-smelling motor 'buses, that no one can wonder at the number who, armed with threepenny chairs, haunt the shadowy nooks of this botanical paradise. If the people of Canterbury are wise, they will give this glory of the International Exhibition a permanent resting-place. It is the be3t illustration of human ingenuity simulating the higher works of Nature I have ever witnessed.