310 Transactions. — Botany. 



pileus, and which is confined to the thick brownish slime with 

 which it is covered : the difference is just that between a fresh- 

 laid and an addled egg. 



4. Gentiana montana, Forst. Another plant which I 

 think should be included in this group as being both very rare 

 and strange in this low wooded district is a species of Gentiana, 

 and, as I believe, G. montana. 



The natural home of this pretty little flowering-plant is on 

 the open grassy tops of the neighbouring high Euahine moun- 

 tain-range, where it embellishes the small herbage of its sub- 

 alpine locality with its numerous pale and neat flowers, which 

 are large for such a small plant. I have only met with it in 

 one small open spot on Tahoraiti Plain, where several plants 

 of it grew ; but I do not think it is to be found anywhere else 

 in all the lower and wooded grounds. My detecting it there 

 very much surprised me ; indeed, as it was so long back since 

 I last saw it growing on the mountains (in 1852), at first sight 

 I supposed it to be a new species. Now, seeing that the seeds 

 of the Gentiana are neither minute nor light (feathery), the 

 question arises, How should it be found here on the plains so 

 far away from its natural mountain-home ? 



5. Another fern, Lomaria elongata, Blume (L. colensoi, 

 Hook. ; L. hetcrophylla, Col.). The same reason which led me 

 to bring forward the preceding plant causes me also to note 

 here this fine and peculiar fern. Its original habitat, where I 

 first detected it (in 1842), was on the banks of a brawling 

 mountain-stream in the deep forests in the interior to the 

 north-west of Lake YVaikare, in the celebrated Urewera 

 country, where, on those alluvial flats, it formed large and 

 continuous strange-looking beds, through which it was diffi- 

 cult to force one's way, there being no path or track: this, 

 however, was partly owing to the small driftwood and trees 

 carried thither by heavy floods being concealed among its 

 thickly-growing large fronds, so that one stumbled at every 

 step, often getting ugly and painful knocks on one's shins. 

 And here I may remark that, in travelling in those early times, 

 and always on foot, in those places along the sides of streams 

 in the wooded interior, the plan was to cross and recross the 

 stream continually to the more open bank, there being no 

 track whatever, the only guide for direction of one's course 

 being the stream itself. 



Here, however, in this Hawke's Bay bush district, I only 

 know of one small isolated spot on the side of a mountain 

 streamlet where it is found, and it grows there luxuriantly. 

 I have never before met with it save in the interior. A few 

 years ago, however, a settler at Woodville (an old Hawke's 

 Bay resident), in clearing his section of land, found this fern 

 there growing, and, being much surprised on seeing it, from its 



