Hutchinson — The Napier— Oreenmeadows Road. 413 



and cultivation. A few years ago an enterprising person 

 fenced in a section of sea-marsh bordering the Wharerangi 

 Road. It consisted of a desolate stretch of salt-weed bordered 

 by pools, tenanted by just such a population as described 

 from the seaward side of the road. It was then ploughed (it 

 must have been wet work in many places for the horses), 

 harrowed, and sown down in oats. These came up strong 

 and green on the higher portions of the paddock, then redden- 

 ing, lessened and failed altogether over the lower portions, 

 nearly three-quarters of the area. Here the salt-weed sprung 

 up refreshed, and the crabs returned to bore again in the 

 sodden furrows. But in spite of apparent relapse the plough- 

 ing had acted beneficially for land-plants. Co tula repens, 

 the " bachelor's button," sprang up thickly in the salt-weed ; 

 then on the unbroken furrows a clover (the black medick, 

 Medicago lupulina) got a grip, and that pioneer of the 

 silt the buckhorn plantain. Then it was ploughed again 

 and sown with mangold-wurzels, with about the same result 

 as with the oats — a fair crop inland, but dwindling outward 

 to little yellow bulbs no larger than a radish. The second 

 ploughing strengthened the land-plants ; a sward of plantain 

 and a feather-topped grass all but ousted the salt-weed. A 

 third ploughing was followed by maize, which still left the 

 outer edges to the plantain and grass, but brought in with it 

 a wonderful collection of foreign weeds — fat-hen, Prince of 

 Wales' feather, and others — which, now the maize is cut for 

 green fodder, have taken full possession. The some-time 

 marsh is now a paddock, waiting only the plough to fall into 

 the same state as the monotonous grassy levels inland. 



Bevond the Wharerangi turn-off the sea-marsh fauna and 

 flora are soon lost in paddocks, whose alien weeds and grasses 

 are encroaching yearly upon them. It is curious to note that 

 here and there an ill-drained portion has, in spite of culti- 

 vation, gone back to its original salt- weed ; and Samolus 

 iittoralis and Selliera radicans follow the drain-sides right 

 up to Greenmeadows Township. But these drains have quite 

 lost their sea-marsh fauna ; crabs and sand-hoppers have 

 given place to woodlice again, and of all the shells 

 only Potamopyrgua antipodarum has survived the change to 

 pure fresh water. It is here with its relative P. corolla 

 and the limneids Amphipeplea ampulla and Planorbis corinna. 

 These last three species are emphatically denizens of fresh 

 water. If careful notes were taken year by year of their 

 habitats, I think they would be found to be encroaching on 

 the sea-marsh by water, just as the snails, slugs, woodlice, 

 weeds, and grasses are by land. At present they are down 

 as far as the Napier Park Racecourse, on the Greenmeadows 

 side ; at Napier they are in the swamp channel opposite the 



