Hill. — Dacttjlanthus Taijlori. 437 



It is not necessary here to refer in detail to the interesting questions 

 suggested, as my purpose is merely to show how two districts, separated so 

 far apart, when placed side by side illustrate identical conditions in their 

 changes, their growth, and structure. Nature works on similar lines, al- 

 though the final results may be dissimilar ; but here, over a district extending 

 through two degrees of latitude covered by these remarks, the geology 

 can be read without difficulty. 



Thus the past can easily be dovetailed with the present. Construction 

 and destruction are ever in operation, and all the forces of nature have 

 one of these two ends in view. A whole district like that along the east 

 coast may suddenly disappear, but upon the ruins new foundations at once 

 begin to be built that in the end show sufficient growth as to become 

 suitable as man's dwelling-place. The geologist cannot say how long it 

 will take to fill up the waters that were once land-areas, but the process 

 that immediately followed the disappearance of the Great Wairarapa still 

 continues, and will continue unless there should come another period of 

 volcanic activity and earth-movements such as was experienced at the 

 going-out of the Pliocene and the coming-in of the Pleistocene periods in the 

 geological history of this country. 



Art. XLV. — On Dactylanthus Taylori. 

 By H. Hill, B.A., F.G.S. 



[Read before the Hawke's Bay Philosophical Society, \3th August, -1907.] 



In vol. xxviii of the " Transactions of the New Zealand Institute," p. 493, 

 there is an article by the late T. Kirk, F.L.S., on Dactylanthus Taylori. It 

 contains all the information which was known up to that time concerning 

 the life-history of this interesting and solitary (?) New Zealand genus of 

 the order Balanofhorew, which includes a variety of root-parasites. Kerner 

 and Oliver, in their " Natural History of Plants," vol. i, p. 161, state that 

 " the distinctive property of true parasites resides exclusively in the with- 

 drawal of nutrient substances from the living vegetable or animal bodies 

 which they invade." Based upon this definition, parasites are classed into 

 three groups, the first including " generally all microscopic forms which 

 live in the interior of human beings and animals, chiefly in the blood " ; 

 the second including " fungi possessing mycelia which have the power of 

 withdrawing by the entire surface of their filamentous cells or by clavate 

 outgrowths of the same nutritive material from the tissues of the host in- 

 vaded by them " ; and the third comprising " flowering-plants wherein the 

 seedling upon emerging from the seed penetrates into the host by means 

 of suction roots, or some other part which subserves the function of a suction 

 root, so as to absorb juices from the host." It is to the latter group that 

 Dactylanthus Taylori belongs. 



The order BalanophorecB contains about forty species, belonging to 

 fourteen genera. They are mostly tropical or subtropical in their distribu- 

 tion over the Old and New Worlds, and are usually found in the deep re- 

 cesses of the forest. 



