with a new team of bullocks it would be all but impossible to do it well. The question of a garden fence is one of some importance, and as it differs considerably from the same question as applied to fields of some extent, I may as well consider it here, even while I defer the other until a future paper. In fencing a garden there are two things to be borne in mind security and beauty. I do not mean to say that these are not of importance in other fences, but that they are all-important in that of a garden. Without security against cattle, sheep, and pigs, a garden is almost useless, while half the pleasure of having a garden is done away with if it is not made pretty; this prettyness is almost unattainable without the aid of an appropriate boundary fence. The first aim, therefore, in setting about a boundary fence for your garden ought to be the getting a good sightly live fence of some kind as soon as possible. A ditch and bank will tend most of all to the success of any fence which you may plant, both as supplying a good defence for the young plants, and as draining away the superfluous water which often injures and even kills them. If the site of the house is in the near neighbourhood of any well grown tea-tree scrub, of from twelve to twenty feet in height, you cannot possibly get a better fence than will be supplied by driving stout stakes of this wood into the ground, then throwing up your bank round the stakes, leaving the tops of them about three feet above the earth of the bank. The tops of the manuka should then be woven between the stakes horizontally, and well squeezed down. The result will be a fence which will perfectly exclude all animals which can injure your garden crops, and in short everything, unless you keep fowls. As to the particular plant best adapted for garden fences, there is room for a good deal of controversy. Some persons speak in favour of furze hedges if well attended to, but I do not think it is wise on clay lands, at least, to introduce them for this purpose. My reasons are these. Furze, although making an excellent hedge in probably a shorter time than any other plant used in this Colony, has these peculiarities; it bears a vast quantity of seeds, which it throws out from it with some little force upon the bursting of the seed pod, and without constant attention it becomes so far withered at the roots as to be very apt to take fire easily. Each of these is a serious drawback to its usefulness as a plant for garden fencing on clay lands. In a garden where the land is constantly in a favourable state for the reception and growth of seeds, the young furze plants would prove no common source of annoyance, while the danger to the house from the near neighbourhood of so inflammable a fence must be very evident to everyone. To the use of the whitethorn the objections are much fewer. Its advantages are many : it grows well, and might be expected to form a good fence before the brush fence of which I have spoken was worn out. It is also a very pretty fence in spring and summer, and with care can be made a very impervious fence indeed. In spite, however, of these advantages, it cannot be denied that there are several not unimportant drawbacks to its general usefulness. The plants in the first place will generally prove costly before they can be brought to the bush-settler's farm; when this has been done he is sure to find that a certain proportion of the plants will languish and die. The difficulty of refilling their places is proverbial. It has not, I may also mention, the great advantage possessed by many other plants of being an evergreen. While, therefore, many will always grow thorn hedges partly from conviction of their goodness, and partly, no

doubt, from old association, I must express my opinion that better plants for the purpose may be found in New Zealand, both in regard of their expense and also of beauty and utility. The plant to which I think the new settler's attention on clay land had better be directed, for a garden fence at all events, is that known as the kangaroo acacia. This plant is, I believe, a native of South Australia, but it grows here with a luxuriance which I can scarcely suppose it surpasses in its native land. As there are already a good many fences of it in the country, the seed is not at all difficult to procure in small quantities. The plant grows readily from the seed; but if it can be managed, it is better to force it in a small garden bed. Three years will, in favourable situations, and with proper attention, be found sufficient to form an excellent fence of this plant against cattle great and small. It is also remarkable for its beauty of colour, and has the great advantage of remaining unchanged in summer and winter. It does, however, require attention; indeed, the greatest mistake commonly made by settlers, old as well as new, is a foolish neglect of their fences. No plant will make, or continue to make a good fence, unless it is carefully attended to, and pruned at least twice a year. The kangaroo acacia is no exception to this rule, neither is it, however, more troublesome in this way than the whitethorn or any other plant of which I know anything. With ordinary care and attention in its use, the new settler may certainly rely upon having an excellent fence for his garden.

Care must be taken in putting in the young plants not to push them in anyhow, and into any sort of soil, as this usually leads to their being planted in the coldest and wettest of the clay which has just been turned up from the bottom of the ditch. The hardier plants may, indeed, survive such treatment; but the weaker ones will most certainly perish, and the stronger ones, although they will probably survive, will do so as poor, puny, useless plants, that will not form a fence for years to come. Even where the plants are put in with the greatest care in the best soil, some are certain, often from unknown causes, to wither and die. When this is the case, the earliest opportunity should be taken to supply the gap, as the longer it is left undone the more difficult will it become to do it at all. Large plants appear to draw away the strength of the land so effectually as to have no nourishment for the small newly planted ones, which often refuse to grow altogether in the immediate neighbourhood of the larger ones. If care is taken in these respects, and the bank is carefully kept clear of weeds, which are of rapid growth upon banks made of ungrassed sods, the fence is almost certain to do well, and, in a very short time, to get entirely the better of weeds and other enemies to its growth. The pruning of fences is a subject which demands an experience of a rather different kind from my own for its proper treatment. I may, however, remark that I do not advocate the very early pruning of fences formed of the kangaroo acacia, as they do not seem to require or, indeed, to bear it so well as the thorn, or furze plants. If a fence of this kind is only slightly topped until the fourth year of its growth, I think it will be found to succeed better than upon the more vigorous and scientific systems of some who ought to know better than myself.

A LANDED ARISTOCRACY FOR NORTHERN NEW ZEALAND.

A DAY DREAM.

NEW ZEALAND has, we all know, got a very democratic Constitution, and this we do not regard as an evil unless it leads us to become a very democratic people. The evils of a state devoid of any recognised aristocracy are so generally observed now-a-days, that it is needless for me to recount them here; but even where there is an aristocracy of a sort such as that in America, the gain is not very great to the national character. The American aristocracy is one of money, in the Northern States at least, and its success has not been very encouraging. The grand distinction between it and England's aristocracy is, that the latter is a landed aristocracy.

My title may startle some, but a little consideration will convince most of us that some kind of aristocracy is inevitable in every country; and if so, it may be well to make an attempt after the best sort. Men soon lose that sort of equality which depends upon all being equally poor and obliged to work equally hard, which is at times characteristic of new colonies; and unless circumstances guide the community towards amassing large properties, as in the case of some of the great sheep-running countries, the natural tendency is towards a mere aristocracy of money. Some species of aristocracy is inevitable, and in this province circumstances have stood greatly in the way of ours being a landed one.

Is there any way in which our aristocracy or upper classes of society may be prevented from being entirely composed of the town-resident mercantile men? I, for my part, believe and sincerely hope that there is. I indulge in looking forward to a time when there will be large landed proprietors scattered over our province to give stability and weight to the more conservative part of our Constitution, yielding, by their means of superior education, a constant supply of good magistrates and representatives for their districts, whose wants they know, and with whose interests their own are identical. It seems to me that, if this is not to be realised, our province will want one great element of social and political progress which has done so much for England's greatness, and is doing so much for some of our sister provinces in New Zealand. To say that this landed gentry is detrimental to the progress of the other classes of society is to contradict the experience of England for many years past. The English tenant-farmer on the estate of some great landed proprietor is better off, to an extent which has become proverbial, than the owner of some small piece of land which he farms himself. The reason is obvious, for while the small proprietor has only his own resources to fall back upon, or the yet more unpleasant alternative of borrowing on mortgage, the other can get many operations performed by means of the great land-owner's capital, part of which is at his service for all permanent improvements.

We are not without some considerable landed proprietors in this province, it is true, but they present few points of resemblance to the class which I have referred to. They are, in short, traders, and look upon their land as so much invested cash, to be drawn out and re-invested as soon as a good opportunity offers. They are, in short, the first specimens of the monied aristocracy, who cannot by any possibility supply the place of the other class.

Neither history, nor the accounts of travellers, give us any very high opinion of the state of countries where the soil is parcelled out into minute holdings cultivated by the owners. The great inducement which has drawn most of our settlers hitherwards from the mother country has no doubt been that they might settle on and cultivate land which is hereafter to belong to their children and descendants after them. Nor would I for one moment discourage them in this wish. I would only observe that its attainment involves a degree of hardship and labour during many years such as few tenant-farmers in Britain ever dream of undergoing.

If, then, we could devise a plan for raising up a class of good landlords, I believe that there is no need of our being deprived of the valuable body of men comprised in the general class-"tenant-farmers." I have no doubt I shall be looked upon as a wild theorist by many in propounding my ideas on this subject, and I submit. It is only a daydream after all, and I but a day-dreamer; but even dreams are sometimes worth noting, and I indulge the hope that some one may find something to think over in this one of mine. If any one supposes that I am propounding a plan, cut and dry, to be taken up and worked like a piece of well-finished machinery, he is much mistaken. It is not a plan, but a dream of what a plan might be. I believe in my own dream, however, in its main features that is, and I hope to plant the same ideas in some other people's minds, in the hope that my dream may become some other person's reality.

First, then, before I begin to dream at all: I have three ideas strongly developed in my mind, from which my dream, if traced by a subtle metaphysician, would be found to spring. First, that it is for the honour and well-being of this part of New Zealand that it should possess a class of large landed proprietors somewhat like the English Squirearchy. Second, that it is possible to make such a squirearchy an institution of this province. Third, that the time is near when, if ever, the thing is to be feasible. To transplant some cuttings of the tree which we wish to cultivate seems to be a reasonable course. Younger sons of wealthy old English families frequently inherit large fortunes in money. These fortunes it is difficult to find a fitting employment for in England where wealth is already so rife. The possessors of these fortunes are in many cases young men of the vigorous temperament which leads to their becoming strokes of eight-oars, patrons of the Ring, and Alpine or Norwegian travellers. The special settlement clauses in the present Land Regulations of the Province of Auckland, and the provisions of the new Native Titles Bill, about to become law, will afford to such young men as these a field for their energies and an inducement to their exertions in founding family estates to vie with those of England's proudest houses.

Let us suppose the case of an English gentleman who believes that he is qualified for emulating to some extent the energy, self-denial, and administrative ability which produced the Bridgewater canals-such a

young man as may be now finishing his career at one of the English universities-brimful of energy, and delighting in the hardship and effort required for the Alpine traveller or Norwegian tourist. Suppose the fortune to which he will succeed at the age of twenty-one to amount to somewhere nearly two hundred thousand pounds, and that he is already speculating on what he should do in the crowded state of England's walks of life. If such a man were to stumble upon the idea which I am now considering, I think he might do well for himself, his descendants, and the future of this colony, by following it up in some such way as the following-Let him acquire from the native owners, through an agent here, a block of say sixty thousand acres of land, comprising a fair proportion of first-class soil. This will cost him about thirty thousand pounds, let us say. As the negotiations would not improbably be somewhat tedious, he might in the meantime arrange with the Provincial Government that he should bring out a selection of suitable agricultural immigrants, and that Government should set apart as special settlement land a block of approved quality, to be selected with land orders procured on account of these immigrants, containing say thirty thousand acres.

As so much of the land here is in its natural state covered with forest, I will suppose the next step to be the selecting and bringing from one of the North American colonies a ship load of hardy pioneers, accustomed to hew homesteads out of the forest; say sixty able men, the greater number of whom having wives and families, the whole party may be supposed to represent nearly ten thousand acres. The cost of bringing them, and subsequent expenses before they are at work, will make the land cost quite ten shillings per acre.

For reclaiming the open land, by turning the sombre wastes of fern and tea-tree into smiling corn fields and verdant meadows, a similar sized party, made up of agricultural labourers and farmers of small capital, might be selected in the United Kingdom, and brought out at as short an interval after the others as will enable the men of the first party to prepare temporary dwellings for them on the several locations where they are to commence cultivating. By the time these two parties are ready to begin work, they will have cost our supposed friend about (£10,000) ten thousand pounds; and it will be a proper precaution that, before taking passage, each man of both parties be required to give a promissory note for amount of expense to be incurred for them and their respective families, payable on demand, should there be good reason to believe that they are about to leave the Province of Auckland prior to the expiration of the three years' residence which is by law required for making the Crown Grant obtainable for the land selected by means of the land orders issued on their behalf; but, on completing that term of residence, the acceptors to be entitled to have the promissory notes returned without payment.

I will suppose the best of the forest land surveyed into thirty allotments, of about 200 acres each, in each of which the most eligible piece of 40 acres in extent is marked off, and that in the beginning of the month of March the sixty backwoods-men begin their operations of chopping the underwood, and felling all the trees upon these thirty pieces of 40 acres; even if the forest is of the heaviest and most tangled kind prevailing in this province, that number of the sort of men described will be able to have the work completed in the month of September next