284 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
their efforts were deeply appreciated. Professor Cheeseman, who 
was the outstanding systematic botanist of the Dominion, was then 
in rather delicate health but was able to be of great service to all 
of us, but especially to me. We were all grieved to learn of his 
death a few months ago. He gave helpful advice about reaching 
the more interesting regions near Auckland and determined for 
us the plants brought in from day to day. Since most of their 
larger plants were in vegetative condition at that season of the 
year identification was doubly difficult and a mere morphologist 
deeply appreciated the help Dr. Cheeseman was so well qualified 
and so willing to give. 
The three principal islands constituting the Dominion of New 
Zealand extend in a north and south direction from 34° to 48° 
South latitude. This would correspond to that portion of our 
eastern coast from Wilmington to Newfoundland. Or, compared 
with the interior of our country, these islands would extend from 
near Little Rock, Arkansas, to Grand Forks, North Dakota, which 
is about 120 miles north of Duluth. North Island is 515 miles 
long, and has an area of 44,000 square miles. It is separated by 
Cook Strait from South Island which is somewhat larger. The 
southernmost is Stewart Island which was not visited by any of 
our party. 
The proximity of all parts of these islands to the sea gives them 
an oceanic climate with diminished extremes of temperature and 
insures relatively high humidity. The rain fall of North Island 
averages about fifty inches with considerable variations in parts 
due to topography, especially about the higher mountains. The 
distribution of precipitation throughout the year is fairly uniform 
with an increase during their autumn and winter months. North 
of Auckland conditions are more nearly subtropical. The central 
part of North Island is considerably wider and interior portions 
show greater daily and seasonal range. There freezing temper- 
atures frequently prevail at night. While it was midwinter dur- 
ing our visit there in July and August not even the cooler end 
of North Island had snow though the mountains were white on 
their sides. 
One must not gather from these statements too optimistic an 
opinion of the delights of a New Zealand winter, however moder- 
ate the descriptions may sound. Accustomed to the rigors of our 
Iowa climate we anticipated weather like our early autumn but 
found something quite different from our Indian Summer. Though 
