84 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
CHAPTER VI. 
THE STORY OF THE GRASSLANDS. 
General remarks—Samuel Butler’s opinion of New Zealand flowers—Distribution 
of the grassland—Classification of the grassland—Composition and distri- 
bution of low tussock-grassland — The silver-tussock and hard-tussock 
associations—Statistics regarding the growth-forms of low tussock-grassland 
—List of species of low tussock-grassland—The “stupid gentian ”—Shrubs 
of the grassland— The dwarf brooms— The spaniard — Drought-resisting 
structure of many low tussock-grassland plants—Evolution of low tussock- 
grassland—Tall tussock-grassland—The growth-form of the red-tussock— 
Appearance and constituents of certain tall tussock-grassland associations— 
The Danthonia australis association—Tussock-grassland from the economic 
aspect—The question of burning—A valuable tall tussock. 
WueEn the early settlers reached their antipodean home they must 
have been struck by the absence of green meadows gay with butter- 
cups, daisies, coltsfoot, and oxeyes; regretfully, too, would they 
call to mind the wealth of wild hyacinths and white anemones of 
the spring-time woods, the stately foxglove, or hillsides yellow with 
the cowslip. Samuel Butler, erstwhile sheep-farmer, but afterwards 
a philosophical writer, voiced this feeling when he wrote, “ Sum- 
ming up, then, the whole of the vegetable and animal products of the 
settlement [Canterbury], I think that it is not too much to say 
that they are decidedly inferior in beauty and interest to those of 
the Old World.” And, again, “I do not know one pretty flower 
which belongs to the plains,” and “ We have one very stupid white 
gentian.” Later, when Butler had read Darwin’s “ Origin of Species,” 
and had contributed in 1863 a eulogistic article on that immortal 
work to the Christchurch Press, he might have written differently, 
for he surely would have learnt, as he did afterwards, that the interest 
in plants or animals is not aesthetic merely, but biological, and he 
would have comprehended that the monotonous array of tussocks, 
the despised spear - grass and wild -irishman, and the herbs with 
insignificant flowers were just as important members of organic 
nature and had stories of their own as sensational and fascinating 
as those of their more gaudy sisters of the Swiss Alps, which he 
admired so greatly. 
