372 Transactions. — Botany. 



for ornamenting their chiefs' carved-headed staffs, which are 

 also used as weapons of defence. They are also fond of taming 

 these birds as pets and decoys, which if taken young will soon 

 talk ; hut they are very mischievous, and their bite is severe. 

 That little black pest the sandfly was here in countless 

 swarms, owing, I suppose, to the sandy nature of the soil. I 

 never before noticed them in such numbers at any place away 

 from the immediate sea-coast, to the sandy shores of which 

 they are generally confined. Their bite is most virulent just 

 before and after rain. The natives call them naviu. 



At this village I remained several days, busily engaged 

 with the natives, many of whom were astonished at seeing a 

 white man. On resuming my journey, our route at first lay 

 over high steep hills, clothed with forests to their summits, 

 thence descending to a deep valley, where ran a rapid brawl- 

 ing stream of from 2ft. to 3ft. in depth. By the immediate 

 fiat banks of this river, among gigantic herbaceous ferns and 

 underwood, decaying logs, and fallen trees (which latter 

 seemed as if in times of severe floods to have been brought 

 hither and stranded, and proved serious impedimenta to our 

 progress, often causing painful wounds and bruises, from their 

 not being seen), we travelled on, every now and then crossing 

 the stream, which we certainly did more than fifty times. 

 This was by no means pleasant travelling ; but there was no 

 alternative. It was here on these alluvial flats I first saw a 

 large and peculiar species of Lomaria growing extensively and 

 closely, and hiding the decaying logs and sticks.* On the 



* This large, striking, and strange-looking fern was early described by 

 me (with others, in the " Tasinanian Journal of Natural Science," vol. ii., 

 p. 175, 1843) a.i L. heterophylla, from the curious abnormal forms of its 

 ever-varying fronds or leaves; subsequently by Sir W. J. Hooker, in bis 

 " Icones Plantarum," vol. vii., tab. 627, 628, from specimens secured on 

 this occasion, as L. colensoi (there being already a species of Lomaria 

 named heterophylla, of which I, here at the antipodes, was ignorant). 

 This name has again been altered by Sir J. D. Hooker, in his N.Z. Flora, 

 to L. elongata, Blurne ; and since then it has been further referred to 

 L. patersoni, Spreng., by Baker (including also L. cumingiana, Hook., 

 and L. punctata, Blume) in his " Synopsis Filicum." This last is an 

 Indian fern, and is well drawn, with dissections and full descriptions, by 

 Beddome in his " Ferns of Southern India," tab. xxviii. and xxviiiA. I 

 still, however, think our New Zealand fern to be distinct from L. pater- 

 soni. While plentiful in its proper inland home, it is very scarce in 

 Hawke's Bay District. I only know of it growing in one small limited 

 spot on the side of a hill streamlet in the Seventy-mile Bush, near Danne- 

 virke, and rediscovered there by me in 1888, after a lapse of more than 

 forty years, when I hailed it as an old acquaintance. The Maori name of 

 this peculiar fern is also worthy of notice, as showing (what I have more 

 than once called your attention to in my papers) their correct natural 

 mode of naming plants and other things — pakauroharoha — literally, 

 slightly-outstretched wing, from its broad and lax pinnntifid segments; 

 adopted from the term given to the attitude of a shag when drying its 

 wet wings on a tidal bank. 



