260 THE GARDENER. [June 



In its earliest stage the stem consists of cells closely packed 

 together, which, from their crowded state and consequent pressure 

 during growth, assume various shapes called cellular tissue ; and if 

 the texture of it is hexagonal, it is called parenchyma (from its sup- 

 posed likeness to liver or lungs). There are other forms of cellular 

 tissue in it, as vascular tissue, which includes woody tissue and fibro- 

 cellular tissue (cell with a spiral coiled up in it), but one and all 

 these forms are only modifications of cellular tissue. 



Labore Vinces. 



NEW ZEALAND FORESTS. 



The mystic law of association seems to crowd around the word forest — 

 the idea of all that is voracious in the brute, cunning in the reptile, or 

 treacherous in the savage. Were we transferred to the jungles of India, 

 the backwoods of America, or even the more immediate bush of Aus- 

 tralia, we might experience such treachery, cunning, or voracity. But 

 in the peaceful shades of New Zealand forests the traveller may rest 

 at ease, without fearful apprehensions of attacks by savagery in any 

 form whatever. 



Unlike the open forest of the sister colony, the New Zealand forest 

 presents one mass of dense vegetation ; much of it seems to take the 

 shape of an immense cone, commencing with the lesser forms of vege- 

 tation, and gradually rising, until in the centre the giants of the forest 

 attain to an altitude of from 100 to 200 feet. The interior of the 

 forest presents a strange appearance, causing one to think that nature 

 had attempted the humourous in place of the grand or sublime. For 

 the grotesque forms of parasites, the strange positions of twisted trees 

 bending in all shapes so as to obtain space for growth, with here and 

 there the dead and dying endeavouring to reach the ground, form 

 figures, some of which would puzzle a Euclid to describe. But amid 

 all we find ample food for reflection, in considering that while men con- 

 gregate together, forming nations which in succession rise and fall by 

 the clashing of arms or the degeneracy of power, Nature, as if all 

 unconscious of such changes, unremittingly continues her^labour with 

 fibre and tube, and the wondrous mechanism of a thousand leaves — 

 thus building up these mighty forests, which patiently await the time 

 when the adventurous explorer shall break in upon her solitude, and 

 open to the world another field of enterprise. The New Zealand 

 forest is entirely evergreen, and though the return of spring is not 

 visible in a fresh outburst of foliage, which makes the woodlands of the 

 old country so attractive, yet there is compensation in the landscape 

 being spared from the desolating appearance of leafless trees. 



Many of those plants which adorn our conservatories with continual 

 freshness are natives of this forest. For instance, the Tree-Fern Dick- 



