A LETTER FROM MAORI-LAND. 29 



is like a huge crimson fire, and is a sight not soon to be forgotten. 



Nowhere, perhaps, in the world is there to be found such a 

 profusion of ferns of all sorts and sizes, as in the damp, sheltered 

 nooks of the New Zealand forests. Most conspicuous amongst 

 them are the graceful Tree-ferns, great fellows towering to the 

 height of 20 and 30 feet, and at the same time looking so delicate 

 and airy that one almost fancies it possible to take one on each 

 shoulder and walk off with them. 



Climbing ferns are here found in great profusion, and of these 

 one of the commonest, yet most curious, is Polypodium serpens 

 (Foist), the barren fronds of which are quite round, while the 

 fertile ones are long, and both are entire and fleshy. They are 

 covered with a dense coating of beautiful stellate hairs, and are 

 most interesting under the microscope. We are all familiar with 

 stellate hairs in many plants, but it is somewhat unusual to meet 

 with them in the fern tribe. P. serpejis is also found abundantly 

 in Queensland. 



Polypodium Billiardari (Brown) is another very pretty climbing 

 fern, having a thick, fleshy, creeping rhizome, and whose sections 

 prove quite a treat for the microscopist, it being just of the right 

 firmness of structure to cut into sections, and presenting under 

 the instrument a most curious structure. It is a common fern, 

 climbing over trees and rocks everywhere. 



We admire exceedingly some of the larger Lycopods, and we 

 would like to speak more about them and the multitude of other 

 beautiful plants which abound here; but we have many other 

 topics on which we wish to dwell, and so are reluctantly compelled 

 to turn away from these charming Flora. A convenient object to 

 utilise as a stepping-stone between the consideration of the plant 

 and the animal worlds, is the very curious organism known as the 

 New Zealand " Vegetable Caterpillar." Though but an exagger- 

 ated example of a very common species of parasiticism, this 

 object is sufficiently strange to warrant more than a passing glance. 

 The caterpillar is the larva of a moth, Hepialus virecens (Roberts), 

 and feeds upon the leaves of a tree. 



Before changing into the chrysalis, the caterpillar buries itself 

 in the earth, and it is then that the curious phenomenon of which 

 we are now speaking takes place. About the month of March, in 



