58 JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST 
about entering on an uninhabited route, and that too without 
a guide. 
Early in the morning of the 4th, we left Otahuhu in a 
small canoe which we had borrowed, and paddling down the 
Bay about. four miles, landed on the northern side of the 
harbour, and continued our course by the muddy winding 
shores of Te Wau, a little cove, where the path leading to 
Kaipara commenced. Here, while my natives were engaged 
in cooking our breakfast, I discovered a shrub of a genus 
altogether unknown to me. It bears an oblong succulent 
bacca, containing several large, angular, and irregularly shaped 
seeds (248) ; the mode of growth is diffuse and slender, with 
but few branches, and its height is from 5 to 9 feet. In habit 
alone it approaches some species of the Coprosma genus. 
There were several of these shrubs here, on the immediate 
banks of a little rivulet which ran through this dell; I did 
not, however, observe them in any other locality. Continuing 
our journey, I found, in ascending the first clayey hill from 
the sea-side, a handsome shrubby Dracophyllum (249), which, 
from its not being noticed by Cunningham in his “ Pre- 
cursor," I suppose to be a new species. This shrub is from 
2to 5 feet in height, somewhat rigid in its growth, and 
branched at bottom. It will, with the other new species 
already mentioned, No. 145, naturally fall between D. lati- 
folium, Banks, and D. Urvilleanum, Rich., and thus con- 
nect the whole of the already known New Zealand species. 
We travelled on, over open and barren heaths, in a northerly 
direction, till sunset, but saw nothing new in these dreary and 
sterile wilds, save the Dracophyllum already noticed. Bivou- 
acked for the night in a little dell, nestling among the close 
growing Leptospermum : not a stick being anywhere within 
ken large enough to serve as a tent-pole. Next morning we 
recommenced our journey in rain, the country for several 
miles being much the same as that of yesterday. About noon 
we passed some forests of Dammara, which were burning 
fiercely ; some person or persons who had lately gone that — 
way having set fire to the brushwood, which soon caught the 
