362 Transactions. 



of six pages only dealing with the botany of the Province of 

 Marlborough as a whole.* This contains a very brief account 

 of the distribution of plants on a western spur of Mount Kai- 

 tarau. The increase of our knowledge as to species of New 

 Zealand plants since that date shows that in certain instances 

 wrong identifications were made, as is evidently the case with 

 regard to Ranunculus pinguis, Veronica hectori, and Myosotis 

 capitata. Buchanan also came to the curious conclusion that 

 few additions would be made to his list of the alpine plants, 

 since he writes, " There is little doubt that the shepherds em- 

 ployed to search for plants there [i.e., on the Kaikoura Moun- 

 tains] have pretty well exhausted them." Mr. R. Brown has 

 collected mosses in the valley of the Hapuka, and has described 

 some of the novelties he discovered in the " Transactions o f 

 the New Zealand Institute. "f 



My own acquaintance with the Kaikouras commenced 

 in 1902, when in the February of that year I partially ascended 

 Mount Fyffe twice, and once crossed over its summit, following 

 the long spur from the River Kowhai and descending by an- 

 other spur leading directly from the summit to the plain near 

 the north end of the mountain. A year or two later Mr. Brown 

 and myself camped for some days near the River Conway, 

 which we followed up to its source and to the Palmer Saddle. 

 Quite recently (October, 1905), in company with Mr. and Mrs. 

 H. J. Matthews, I had the great pleasure of again visiting Mount 

 Fyffe and ascending as before by the Kowhai Spur to a height 

 of about 1 ,067 m. During the thirteen years that have elapsed 

 since my first visit my knowledge of New Zealand plant for- 

 mations has been considerably extended, so that the subalpine 

 scrub at once struck me as being different from any that I had 

 observed elsewhere. Mr. Matthews, whose knowledge of living 

 New Zealand plants and of their stations is very wide, also 

 agreed that the formation in question was quite distinct from 

 any he had seen before. Therefore it seems well to put on re- 

 cord some details concerning it, such publication being the 

 more desirable since at any time the scrub may be in large 

 measure destroyed by fire. If this were the case, it must 

 also be borne in mind that the formation could never reappear 

 in its primeval form. J 



* Journ. Linn. Soc, Botany, vol. x, 1869, p. 63. 



t " On the Musci of the Calcareous Districts of New Zealand, with 

 Descriptions of New .Species" (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxxv, 1903, p. 323). 



\ Cockayne, L., " On the Burning and Reproduction of Suhalpine 

 Scrub and its Associated Plants" (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxxi, pp. 416-17* 

 1899) 



