MIDDLE ISLAND OP NEW ZEALAND. 99 



sent will probably be already known to you. In picking up specimens 

 I was chiefly guided by their being found at some distance from the 

 seashore, and therefore, as I imagined, having less chance of being 

 known to botanists than the vegetation of the low levels already ex- 

 plored by French naturalists and others. The collection I have sent 

 you does not however include all that I could have wished or that I 

 know of. There are several other shrubs and herbaceous plants that I 

 shall endeavour to procure upon a future occasion, which I have reason 

 to believe are still nondescript. As the country becomes better known 

 and more opened np, the facilities of obtaining plants will be very much 

 extended. Only last summer our pioneering sheepowners have pushed 

 forward into a very elevated district, — the Fairfield Downs, which lies 

 near the sources of the Eiver Awatena, between the Port Cooper plains 

 and Cape Campbell. In this district it will not be difficult to attain 

 an elevation of 7000 feet, or thereabouts, above the sea : at this height 

 you are in a country where snow in patches lies nearly throughout the 

 year. I intend visiting this district next summer, and both from what 

 I have heard from casual visitors of the place, and from the climate 

 which it must enjoy, I feel sanguine that I shall find some things there 

 which w ill possess considerable interest for you. I regret extremely, 

 when on these expeditions, the very limited amount of my botanical 

 knowledge. 



You inquire about the trees in this district, — which are the highest, 

 and other questions. Our loftiest and largest tree here is what the 

 sawyers call White Pine ; the natives, Kahikatea : it is a Podocnrpus/^ I 

 believe. Trunks are not unfrequently four or five feet in diameter, and 

 rise to a great height. This tree and the Pukatea, a gigantic Myrtle, 

 indicate the very richest soils in the country, — deep alluvial soils, gene- 

 rally rather wet. On the drier alluvial soils the largest trees are the 

 Mai,f the Eed Pine of the sawyers, and the Totara,t a species of Yew. 

 This last is a very picturesque tree, its branches twisting somewhat 

 like the Oak, and growing to a great size : it splits with great freedom, 

 and is, in consequence, the wood most in demand for fencing, laths, and 

 shingles: it is also very durable in the ground, and is the tree of 

 which the natives generally make their canoes. Both the Totara and 

 the Mai grow, by preference, on rather gravelly soils. Another large 

 forest-tree is the « Eimu," DacryJiz^/w cuj)ressmum. This also grows 



P. daci-ydioides, A. Rich. t P. ^picata, Br. X P. T'otara, A.C. 



