416 Transactions;, 



so that it is very probable that a large part of the tussock country of this 

 Island was once bush -covered. However, some areas must always have 

 been in existence on which there was no bush, where the tussock was esta- 

 blished, and from which it could spread to neighbouring tracts when the 

 ecological conditions were favourable for it doing so. 



Continual reference has been made previously to the occurrence of totara 

 logs, and the inference will probably be made that the forests were largely, 

 if not wholly, of totara. In all probability such was not the case. At the 

 present time few areas are covered completely by this tree. It occurs 

 widely distributed through many kinds of bush, but it also occurs at times 

 in groves several acres in extent. It was in all probability only a con- 

 stituent of the former forest, and its predominance among the timber 

 lying on the ground is due to its uncommon power of resisting decay. It 

 is one of the most long-lived of timbers when in damp situations. Other 

 specially resistant timbers, such as broadleaf {Griselinia Uttoralis), are also 

 found, so that in all probability the woods which grew with it have long 

 since rotted away. It must be noted in this connection that I am not re- 

 ferring here to bog-grown timber, such as the manuka, which is so common 

 in so many swamps. 



Since totara was undoubtedly a prominent constituent of this forest, 

 the conditions under which it grows have a very important bearing on the 

 question of the climate which obtained in the area when the forest esta- 

 blished itself. Although it is not a rain-forest tree in the same sense as the 

 rimu {Dacrydium cwpressoides), and although it is perhaps the most xero- 

 phytic of all the New Zealand conifers {vide paper by Miss Griffin, 

 " The Development of some New Zealand Conifer Leaves," Trans. N.Z. 

 Inst., vol. 40. 1908), it is nevertheless a tree which flourishes under con- 

 ditions of good drainage with a damp atmosphere, and specially on deep 

 rich soils — it is, in fact, a prominent member of the New Zealand rain 

 forest. It will grow on light pumice and sandy soils if they have plenty of 

 rain, as well as on heavy clays, and even at times on swamps ; but the 

 existent patches of bush containing this tree in quantity, and also those 

 which furnished a large part of the totara for timber purposes in former 

 times, were in localities with a good, if not a heavy, rainfall. The " totara 

 areas " of the North Island, according to the report made in 1875 by Major 

 Forrestier Walker, were those tracts along the central mountain axis of the 

 Island and near Lake Taupo which had a rainfall of 40 in. a year and upward. 

 To take, for example, the totara forest on the northern slopes of Tongariro 

 and the Waimarino Forest, which contains in parts a large quantity of 

 that timber : they are both situated in a part of the central plateau which 

 receives a heavy rainfall from the west, while the dry eastern slopes of the 

 Ruapehu-Tongariro ridge are either treeless or dotted with patches of 

 Nothofagus cliff ortioides, and the charred fragments of wood in the pumice- 

 drifts which cover that region seem to be from that tree and not from 

 totara. 



The distribution of totara is the South Island, occurring as it does in 

 such localities as Banks Peninsula, Peel Forest, at Glenomaru in the Catlin's 

 district, as well as near the east coast about Dunedin, shows that this 

 tree delights in a well-drained soil, with plentiful supply of rain. It also 

 occurs on the excessively moist hills and swamps of Westland, but in the 

 latter it does not thrive. The forest now existing at the head of the Rakaia 

 is merely an extension of the subalpine totara forest of Westland which has 



