Cockayne. — Plant Geography of the Waimakariri. 101 



"tion of this is given by Captain Huttoa* in a paper entitled 

 "On the Lower Gorge of the Waimakariri." For our pur- 

 poses the chief interest lies in the fact of a station for plant- 

 life so different from the uniformity of the plain being pro- 

 vided by the rocky walls of this gorge, and where, indeed, quite 

 a different vegetation is encountered. Amongst the plants 

 found tiiere are a number which, so far as I know, rarely 

 occur at any distance from the sea, and this seems to 

 strongly favour Captain Hutton's theory, the crucial point 

 of which is that the sea at one time came up to this spot. 

 Of these plants Liiium monogynum, Parsonsia rosea, Gheno- 

 podium triandrum, and Angelica ge7iiculata\ may be especially 

 cited. Regarding this latter Kirk writes, | " I have never seen 

 this plant far from the sea, and doubt its occurrence inland." 



Passing through a deep rock-bound gorge between the 

 Torlesse and Puketeraki Ranges, six miles in length, accord- 

 ing to Haast {loc. cit., p. 244), the table-land is entered. On 

 both sides of this gorge — the upper gorge — hills. of some con- 

 siderable size arise, covered with mixed forest in places, 

 having Fagus solandri as its leading tree. This portion of the 

 river has hitherto been iiiost difficult to examine, but quite 

 recently a road has been made for railway purposes, so the 

 gorge on its south side is now easily reached. It is to be 

 feared that this railway-construction will lead to the destruc- 

 tion of much of the vegetation, since already several fires 

 have destroyed large areas of forest. 



. The upper plains of the Waimakariri form an extensive 

 table-land, in which the bed of the river itself occupies, of 

 course, the lowest part. The average height of the whole is, 

 according to Haast, 630 m. {loc. cit., p. 214), and the extent 

 sixteen miles long by eleven miles wide. From its centre 

 rise several high peaks, which are quite isolated — Mount 

 St. Bernard, Mount Sugar-loaf, and Broken Hill. It is 

 drained by various tributaries of the main river, which have 

 cut for themselves deep beds and formed many extensive 

 river-terraces, which afford in places a station for an interest- 

 ing plant-formation of xerophilous shrubs, of which Veronica 

 cupressoidcsl is one of the most remarkable. The table-land 

 is surrounded on all sides bv loftv mountains, which are cleft 

 by the Waimakariri and its tributaries, whose river-beds lead 

 right into their fastnesses, so enabling the distant summits 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xvi., p. 449. 



1 1 have not observed any of these species growing in the upper 

 gorge. Mr. T. W. Adams tells me that L. monogynum was formerly 

 common in the nver-bed of the Hawkins, at 183 m. above sea-level. 



I "The Students' Flora of New Zealand," Wellington, 1899. 



§ Henslow, "Origin of Plant Structures," London, 1895, p. 108, 

 speaks of this shrub as growing at great elevations on the mountains, 

 whereas it is essentially a plant of the lower mountain and lower sub- 

 alpine regions, growing on river-terraces. 



