NATURALTSATTOX OF A:NIMALS AXD PLAXTS IN N.Z. 303 



where, at least in tlie North Island, it got away from cultivation 

 and quickly established itself as a plant most ditficult to eradicate. 

 As fruit-eating birds increased it increased more rapidly, but there is 

 little doubt that it was largely spread by horses, which will eat the hips 

 but are unable to digest the hard-walled achenes .... It was early 

 recognised as a great pest, and is now most abundant in all parts of 

 the country .... In the Noxious Weeds Act of 1900, this was one 

 of the three plants which were declared to be such without any 

 qualification, the others being the Blackberry and the Canadian (or 

 Californian) Thistle {Cnicus arvensis). By an amendment of the 

 Weeds Act in 1908, the Hawthorn was also stringently prohibited on 

 account of its infection with the bacterial disease known as Fire- 

 blight {Bacillus amylivorus). The Department has come to the 

 conclusion that the disease cannot be coped with so long as the 

 Hawthorn is allowed to remain in evidence ; the planting of Haw- 

 thorn is therefore prohibited, and QYiiry person commits an offence 

 who propagates it in any manner, or who sells any seeds, plants, or 

 cuttings of it." 



The Butterbur "noted as a garden escape by the author in 

 1882" was, we suspect, not Petasites indgaris, as stated, but 

 P. {JSfardosmia) fragrans ; in like manner for '' Mimulus moschatus 

 Linn." (p. 456) we should doubtless read M. LangsdorJfUDovi. ** An 

 auctioneer about that date advertised a plant sale, and as a special 

 attraction notified a number of clumps of ' Chatham Island Lily.' 

 Mr. Thomson found that they were bunches of Petasites, and the 

 auctioneer withdrew them from sale." A few years since, under the 

 name " Winter Heliotrope," an advertisement apjieared in an English 

 paper offering a dozen plants of Nardosmia for four shillings ! It is 

 one of the most conspicuous plants of railway-banks and roadsides in 

 the environs of Dublin. 



All the Thistles are specified by law as " noxious weeds," Onicus 

 arvensis, as was mentioned above, being the worst. Of C. lanceo- 

 latus Mr. Thomson says ; '' I passed through hundreds of acres of 

 newly-ploughed land in the Omaru district in 1873, when the Thistles 

 covered the ground to a height of 6 ft., and it was only possible to 

 get through where cart-tracks had been made and the growth w^as 

 not more than 3 ft. high .... In one patch of ground it com- 

 menced with three Thistles, and in the short space of three years ten 

 acres have been densely covered." 



Ilagwort, which does not seem to have been recorded before 1874, 

 was placed in the Second Schedule of 1900 and raised to the bad 

 eminence of the First in 1908. It is held largely responsible iw the 

 cirrhosis of the liver which has caused considerable mortality amon^^- 

 horses that have fed upon it ; " bee-keepers complain that their 

 summer-honey is dark-coloured, and so strongly flavoured with the 

 nectar of the Kagwort, which is developed in great profusion, that it 

 is ahnost unsaleable." Foxgloves, "purple and white, growing in 

 profusion on the Wangamoa hills, north-east of Nelson, present 

 a glorious blaze of colour : this noxious pest has got completely out 

 of hand and threatens to ruin the country side. It used to be very 

 common in places near Dunedin, but its comparative disappearance is 



