248 



too, it is mixed with certain shrubs which grow with interlaced 

 branches, and the presence of these in conjunction with the boggy 

 nature of the ground and the many hollows it contains makes 

 progress through such a meadow a quite laborious business. 



"Between the tussock and the forest is the scrub, a plant- 

 association of astounding density, which character is furnished 

 chiefly by the shrub before-mentioned with wiry interlacing 

 branches of Suttonia clivaricata. You can walk on its top, 

 you can roll over it, but usually you can no more burst through it 

 than through a thick gorse hedge. 



44 The most important and peculiar characteristic of the sub- 

 antarctic plants is their capacity for rapidly turning into peat, a 

 phenomenon directly in harmony with the climate. So strong is 

 this tendency that many are forming peat in their lower portions 

 and growing above with vigour, the living part putting forth 

 roots and subsisting on its own dead remains. So do the 

 Danthonia and Poa grasses build up trunks, and some of the 

 smaller plants cushions. Everywhere is a soil of peat. Even on 

 the faces of the perpendicular cliffs several feet of peat may have 

 accumulated and become occupied by two species of ferns with 

 thick and dark-green leaves. 



"Ferns, as elsewhere in the New Zealand biological area, are a 

 feature of the sub-antarctic islands. Delicate translucent filmy 

 ferns abound in the rata forest, and even form colonies many 

 yards in extent on the wet upland meadows. The commonest 

 fern, Polystichum vestitum, contrary to its usual habit, has 

 frequently a stout trunk. More interesting is the fact, that in the 

 neighbourhood of Norman's Inlet grows a true tree fern, th9 most 

 southerly plant of its class upon the earth ! A tiny polypody, 

 hardly the length of one's little fingernail, clothes portions of the 

 rock summits, both in the Aucklands and Campbells, while just 

 emerging from the rocky ground at the time of our visit was an 

 old acquaintance common in similar stations in the Southern 

 Alps and even on Mount Egmont, one of the few New Zealand 

 ferns whose leaves die down to the ground in winter. 



"The scenery of the sub-antarctic islands as a whole exhibits 

 both beauty and grandeur. Buffeted continually by the waves of 

 a vast and stormy ocean, the coasts are rugged and precipitous, 

 lhe view from the summit of the western precipices of Auckland 

 Island is sublime. Black basaltic cliffs descend in places so 

 abruptly to the sea for 1,800 feet that a stone could easily be 



dropped from summit to base. Precipitous knife-like razorbacks 

 separating— 1 *-- * - 



ra or 



less regular intervals along the whole of this iron and inhos- 



£• lJT n n 0n the da y the botanists visited the spot the 

 17! ^usually calm ; no white-crested waves were visible 



X thp k? 6 i ge ° f r0cks at the cliff ' s base, and yet the thunder 

 waterfm f!n 6rS "ft™" 1 * burst upon the ear. Near by a 

 re «r ^1 T f. lstenin * silver over the cliff, only to be 

 A short, Hat-ZaV 1 ^ Bpray ' n ° r ever reached its goal, the sea. 

 most Tnho^iHh? V he . W6St lay ^^appointment Island, that 

 Eton lonaM t h TV 161 " the "Up wrecked crew of the 

 NaTur^n^^ and finally cornered 



