CoLENSO. — Oil the Tongariro District. 485 



same paper," which, as far as that subject was concerned, 

 seemed to be quite sufficient. 



Subsequently, however, on my remembering a few nice 

 botanical specimens collected at Tongariro by Mr. Collie, and 

 given by him to me (some of them — Dracophyllum rubrum, 

 Pimeica stylosa, and Thelijmitr a nervosa — being novelties, were 

 described by me|- and exhibited here before this society in 

 1887) ; and also in looking over my album and noticing therein 

 some of the fine photographic views taken by him of Tonga- 

 riro and Kuapehu ; and, further, on my referring to Mr. Hill's 

 paper, read here before you, containing a full account of his 

 visit to those mountains in 1889 j (including copious interest- 

 ing extracts from the accounts of the early visits made to those 

 mountains by Messrs. Bidwill and Dyson some fifty years 

 before), and finding that Mr. Hill, not knowing of Mr. Collie's 

 visits thither, had made no mention of them, although he had 

 slightly noticed other visits made afterwards, as if these were 

 really the first in succession after those of Messrs. Bidwill 

 and Dyson, — I determined on writing a short paper — a 

 resume of Mr. Collie's repeated visits to that locality : espe- 

 cially, too, as he had done what no one else has done, either 

 before or since — descended into the crater of Tongariro and 

 spent a night within it. 



But before that I take up with Mr. Collie's visits, I think 

 I should also mention a still earlier one, performed by Dr. 

 (now Sir James) Hector, to Tongariro in the year 1867, about 

 ten years befoi'e the first visit of Mr. Collie, as this also 

 seems to have been unknown to Mr. Hill.§ 



I quote from the published proceedings of the "Wellington 

 Philosophical Society: " Dr. Hector gave an account of his 

 ■own ascent of Tongariro on the 23rd November, 1867, and 

 explained that the active steam-eruptions on the side of the 



* A copy of Mr. Lys's letter I shall give at the end of this paper, for 

 I consider it well worth being recorded, if only to preserve another 

 instance of the Maori treatment the early settlers and artists (true lovers 

 of nature) had to put up with. 



t In Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xx., p. 200, et seq. And here I may 

 mention that among that small lot of dried plants was a specimen of the 

 common red poppy of our British cornfields (Papaver rhccas), which 

 astonished me; the only specimen I have ever seen in New Zealand. 

 In that same paper several of Mr. Hill's plants from that locality 

 •were also described. 



+ In Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxiv., p. 603. 



§ I may also briefly notice, in a note, that another ascent of Tonga- 

 riro was made by Mr. Lys in 1881, when he conducted an American 

 tourist, Mr. M , to the top of the mountain. Being there over- 

 taken by a snowstorm, they were obliged to pass the night on the 

 summit, but not within the crater. The tourist, however, in an account 

 ■which he published in a Sydney newspaper, on his arriving there, stated 

 that his night on the volcano was T^&sscd ^cithin the crater. 



