Cockayne. — Regrototh of Burnt Forest. 401 



of our flora. The scrub itself, too, consists in the main of 

 beautiful flowering-shrubs, a great number of which are now 

 favoui'ite garden plants in many parts of the world. Should 

 this subalpine scrub be set on fire during a dry season very 

 large areas will be burnt to the ground, and, except in some 

 few protected spots, apparently completely destroyed, together 

 with the contained herbaceous plants and grasses. When it 

 is borne in mind that musterers light fires promiscuously on 

 the mountains to show their whereabouts to their fellow- 

 workers, it may readily be seen that, unless nature does 

 something towards its replacement, this most interesting 

 feature of the New Zealand flora bids fair to become a thing 

 of the past. That nature does not replace this loss is at the 

 present time the commonly received opinion. Mr. A. Plarper, 

 in his work on the Westland Alps, makes the deliberate 

 statement* that "the scrub never grows again when burnt," 

 and consequently he set fire to various patches, so as to 

 provide an easy route up the mountains in time to come. 

 That this statement is not in accordance with facts will be 

 seen from the results of my investigations, as stated at the 

 close of this paper. 



The flora of Arthur's Pass and its vicinity may be natu- 

 rally divided into two sections — eastern and western — the 

 differences between which can be at once perceived even by 

 the untrained eye, the eastern being more lowly in growth 

 than the vvestern, and having as near neighbour a Farjus 

 forest, while the western is much taller, greener, and more 

 luxuriant. Here Facjus is entirely absent, while Draco- 

 phyllum traversii, a most remarkable Epacrid, forms con- 

 spicuous clumps. This difference is one of habit and per- 

 centage of component parts rather than of great difference in 

 species, the dominant shrubs of the western not always being 

 the same as those of the eastern division. 



After making a general examination of the whole, certain 

 spots suggested themselves as eminently suitable for deter- 

 mining — first, the nature of the former vegetation ; and, second, 

 the plants which had appeared since the more or less com- 

 plete destruction of the original scrub. These spots all con- 

 tained patches of considerable size which the fires had com- 

 pletely spared, some belonging to the Midland Eailway fire 

 and others to that of earlier date. Each spot or section, as I 

 propose to call it, I examined carefully, making, with regard 

 to the living scrub, a list of its species, noting their height, 

 the quantity or proportion of each species, the seedlings grow- 

 ing under their shade, with the quantity and size of such 



* " Pioneer Work in the Alps of New Zealand," by Arthur P. Harper, 

 B.A. London, 1896. 

 26 



