410 Transactions. — Geology. 



rightly, of finding it only along the banks of a certain creek 

 near Clive. Another well-known botanist told the writer to 

 look out for ft under the description of " a plant like a rush, 

 but with a fruiting-spike like a loose-headed plantain." This 

 fits the plant exactly, and it was found shortly afterwards on 

 the banks of the creek by the Petane Hotel. It must have 

 been plentiful enough in some part of the region swept over 

 by the flood, for upon large areas of flood silt it sprang up 

 thickly, and is now almost as common a feature on the swamp 

 and harbour shores as the salt-weed. 



These two plants, Triglochin and Salicomia, are both 

 natives : it seems fitting that these pioneers of the silt should 

 be of our native flora. They are followed very closely by an 

 introduction from Europe, the buckhorn plantain (Plant-ago 

 coronopus). Like the Triglochin, it showed up but little till 

 after this flood, but has since increased enormously, and is 

 doing very good work here, being the first plant to take hold 

 of the swamp that is useful from a stock-raiser's point of 

 view. 



The area raised above tide-level, and all its molluscan and 

 crustacean life buried deep in silt, the gulls and curlews left 

 it for better feeding-grounds, and it was not till a strong 

 square-stemmed sedge sprang up thickly in the damper parts 

 that it could boast of any bird-life save an occasional ground- 

 lark. But now that a few species of Mollusca (Potamojnjrgus 

 antipodarum) in great numbers, and an occasional speci- 

 men of Amphibola avellana, have worked up the chan- 

 nels again, and there are pools in places deep enough for 

 eels, one may sometimes see a bittern here, mostly on the 

 seaward side of the road, which is much the lowest and 

 wettest portion. Towards the New Cut, where salt- weed is 

 the largest growth, it is very barren of higher life. But, if the 

 crabs have vanished, their place is taken in point of numbers 

 by land-loving relatives — the common " slater " or woodlouse, 

 an introduced species, and a smaller native species of a marbled 

 brown and white colour, the introduced outnumbering the 

 native by a hundred to one. The vanished shells are repre- 

 sented, too, by a land species — the common grey slug of our 

 gardens. Besides slugs and slaters, spiders and a small 

 hymenopterous insect are fairly plentiful — a poor list after 

 the rich water-life that lies buried under them. 



We can hardly think that it ever crossed the minds of 

 the builders of this road that their embankment would in time 

 act as a boundary between two distinct zoological provinces. 

 Yet. from the Tutaekuri Bridge to the Wharerangi turn-off 

 this road has been for some years practically the boundary 

 between sea-birds, sea-shells, and sea-plants, and land-birds, 

 fresh- and brackish-water shells, and land-plants : the sea 



