an occasional gale from one or the other of those points of the compass.
To learn what the soil and climate are capable of doing in the way of garden produce, it is only needful to take a stroll into the suburbs in any direction, when, behind the close-clipped hedges—of hawthorn, laurel, macrocarpa, or holly—screening many neat dwellings, trim, well-kept gardens will be seen to present, from early spring to latest autumn, a bright display of those flowering plants and shrubs proper to the season. Nor is the fruit garden one whit behind: cherries, apples, pears, plums, peaches, are successfully cultivated, and with somewhat less success, nectarines and grapes; and, of course, all kinds of currant and gooseberry bushes, flourish and bear abundantly.
But notwithstanding the general mildness of our winter season, there are occasional falls of snow—snowstorms they cannot be called—which may lie on the ground in a thin layer of one or two inches in thickness, on the shady side of unfrequented streets, for a day, with probably one or two degrees of frost. This being a Scotch colony, we have a Curling Club, the members of which make frantic efforts on such occasions to enjoy their national game. But they do so under difficulties, for, possibly with the night's rain or the morrow's sun, the snow vanishes, the frost breaks, and the sanguine curlers are disappointed.
There do not seem to have been any very authentic records kept of the weather in Dunedin in the earlier years of the colony—at all events they are not accessible; but it is nearly certain that for at least the last forty years no winter was more severe than that of 1889, when the frost invaded many dwellings, and icicles of considerable size formed in bath-rooms and elsewhere for several nights in succession. Neither is it recorded that during any year so little rain fell and so much sunshine was enjoyed, as was the case during the winter and spring months of the same year. During the whole year only 17 inches of rain were registered, evidently out of all proportion to the average 33 inches.
It is not to be imagined that the climate has no weak points. People are apt to complain that it is always raining in Dunedin. This, of course, is a groundless complaint, seeing that the rain-
