PREFACE.
The scenes of Christmas tales read by English-speaking children have been for the most part naturally laid amid winter, snow, and leafless landscape. The Yule-log and the holly-berry have been time-honoured “properties.” But there are, growing up under the Southern Cross, generations of children, with English speech and English hearts, to whom the Yule-log at Christmas is unmeaning and the snow unknown.
The little story which follows is written for such children as these, and also for those in the older land who have any desire to know what Christmas is like among their kin on the other side of the world.
While seeking to amuse, it is intended to convey pleasant information. New Zealand is a land full of natural wonders and natural beauty; its vegetation and its fauna are every way remarkable. In the following pages the allusions to these wonders and beauties, however playfully introduced, are intended to be truthful. The colours and habits of plants and animals are in sober reality just what they are made to appear in fairy-land.The illustrations are from nature, and will, it is hoped, bear out the text. For the loan of certain birds and clear descriptive notes upon them, I am deeply indebted to Mr. A. Reischek, F.L.S., the well-known naturalist. The kind interest of Professor Thomas, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., and the valuable notes given by him upon the Terraces, Geysers, &c., also lay me under much obligation.
K. C.
Auckland,July, 1889.