STATISTICS REGARDING THE FORESTS. 47 
South Island, however, the great forest of the west already men- 
tioned extended almost unbroken to the east coast. Stewart Island, 
too, was green or black with forest. Not in the lowlands only was 
this mighty tree-community; it swept over the lower hills and 
climbed high on to the flanks of the great ranges. 
Leaving out of consideration the species peculiar to the high 
mountains, the New Zealand forest, as a whole, is made up of 
some 381 species, which belong to 62 families and 150 genera. 
The ferns, with their allies, and the seed-plants number 91 and 290 
respectively. At the head of the list of families that of the ferns 
come first with 88 species, followed at a considerable distance by 
the coprosma family (27 species), and the sedge and the orchid 
families (22 species each); then come the taxad (pine) and myrtle 
families (16 species each), the daisy family (14 species), the lily 
family (11 species), and the araliad family (10 species). No genus is 
represented by more than 24 species (Coprosma), and most have fewer 
than 6. If the ferns are omitted, nearly 90 per cent. of the species 
belong to New Zealand alone. Well may we glory in our “ bush”! 
Coming next to the growth-forms of the forest, there are— 
Trees, 99; shrubs, 63; herbs, 51; grass-like plants, 26; ferns, 88 ; 
climbing-plants (excluding climbing-ferns), 26; perching-plants, 15 ; 
and parasites, 13. The ferns include 8 tree-ferns, 23 filmy ferns, 7 
climbing-ferns, and 17 perching-ferns (excluding such filmy ferns as 
live in that manner). 
There are two distinct forest-formations in New Zealand — the 
rain-forest and the southern-beech forest, the former with tropical 
affinities, and the latter related to the forest of western Patagonia 
and Tierra del Fuego. 
The rain-forest gets its name from the fact that its existence and 
presence is not determined by the water stored up in the soil, but 
by there being an abundance of rainy days. Nothing brings this 
out more clearly than a railway journey from Christchurch to 
Greymouth. At first the train traverses the gradually ascending 
Canterbury Plain, where with the exception of the Riccarton Bush 
there are few trees except those planted by the settler. Leaving the 
plain, the train winds its way through the upland valleys into the 
mountains, the view on either side being yellow tussock-clad slopes, 
with here and there patches of forest in gullies or shady situations. 
After Cass Station is passed, and the River Waimakariri crossed, 
