THE TUSSOCKS HOLD THEIR OWN. 85 
Butler’s contempt for the Canterbury flora was derived from his 
observation of the tussock-grassland; evidently he knew little of 
the much more showy denizens of the highlands. He was certainly 
right, too, in his estimate of the plants as “ wild flowers,” except 
in the case of the “stupid gentian.” But the British meadow is 
an artificial creation, and its pretty flowering-plants are weeds, the 
signs of indifferent farming. On the other hand, much of the New 
Zealand grassland even yet is almost virgin, and its plants are those 
which Nature banded together, to their mutual benefit, after years of 
wandering and change. Evidently, then, information of much more 
moment is to be reached from the study of New Zealand natural 
grassland than from that of Kuropean artificial meadow, and its 
plants at once stand forth as living organisms with special stories of 
their own to tell. 
According to the teaching of present-day plant-geography, a war 
is ever being waged between forest and grassland. Nowhere is this 
better illustrated than in New Zealand, where even man has come 
as the ally of the grassland, and with axe, fire, and foreign grasses 
and clovers has changed into green lush meadows hundreds and 
hundreds of square miles of virgin forests. But with the natural 
grasslands, usually at a height of 1,000 feet and upwards, it is 
different. These for nearly seventy years have been occupied by 
millions of sheep; the tussocks have been repeatedly burned ; 
rabbits exist on them in uncountable numbers; many foreign plants 
have secured a permanent footing; and yet these tussock - grass- 
lands, with but one exception, remain virtually unchanged. This 
speaks volumes as to the suitability of the tussock growth-form for 
its New Zealand environment. With a host of enemies arrayed 
against it, the tussock still stands supreme, except in the lowlands 
where it has fallen before the plough, or in Central Otago, with the 
dry climate and man arrayed against it. 
The headquarters of the tussock-grassland is in the South Island. 
There the Southern Alps cause the water-bringing clouds from the 
Tasman Sea to deposit their burden on the snowy alpine heights 
and on the strip of lowland between them and the Tasman Sea. 
Much rain also falls upon their eastern slopes, but the amount gradu- 
ally lessens in proceeding eastwards, until at a certain point the 
minimum amount demanded by forest for its welfare under the 
special soil and other climatic circumstances provided is not 
