106 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
Finally, stems, leaves, and all are pressed into a dense, hard, 
convex mass, making in the case of Raoulia exvmia an excellent 
and appropriate seat for a wearied botanist (fig. 64). Within the 
plant is a peat made of rotting leaves and branches, which holds 
water like a sponge, and into which the final branchlets send roots. 
Thus the plant lives in great measure on its own decay, and the 
woody main root serves chiefly as an anchor. The vegetable-sheep 
are not inaptly named, for at a distance a shepherd might be misled. 
The rocks of the alpme summits weathering away, and the 
rain not being sufficient to bear all the debris into the valleys, an 
enormous quantity of angular stones collects on the mountain-sides 
in many places, which may form steep slopes for thousands of 
feet. As the traveller wearily ascends these “ shingle-slips,” as 
they are called by those splendid mountaineers, the musterers, the 
stones constantly slip beneath his tread, and slide down the slope. 
Numerous large grasshoppers, grey as the shingle, leap from beneath 
his feet, an occasional black butterfly fits through the air or rests 
upon a rock, while overhead may fly screaming that famous bird 
the kea. All is a scene of utter desolation: it is, in truth, an 
alpine desert. 
To the shingle-slip proper belongs a most peculiar series of plants. 
They have several characteristics in common. Some are true 
summer-green herbs. Most have long roots and are low-growing. 
Many are succulent. Not a few are of a colour similar to the 
shingle. Some have leaves of rather an indiarubber-like texture, and 
one (Craspedia albina), at any rate, is covered with an exceedingly 
woolly mass of hairs. These shingle-slips become burning hot in the 
sunshine, and yet in the evening of the same day may be icy cold. 
At some distance below the surface the stones are wet. The water 
at the plants’ disposal is usually not much above freezing-point. 
Here are a few of the plants to be found in such situations: A 
stiff-leaved grass (Poa sclerophylla); three buttercups—Ranunculus 
chordorhizos, R. crithmifolius (see text-fig., p. 107), and R. Haastu ; 
the snow-white woolly Craspedia alpina; a plant of the carrot 
family (Anisotome carnosula); a daisy, jet black, and with stamens 
like golden pin-heads (Cotula atrata), and its near relative C. Dendyi, 
with larger flower-heads brown or almost yellow in colour; one of 
the pink family (Stellaria Roughi); the curious and sweet-scented 
penwiper-plant (Notothlaspi rosulatum) (fig. 68); a plant with pea- 
