328 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
estry. He is doing a great service especially in the reclamation 
work. We owe him for many fine photos of New Zealand trees 
and for several interesting reports on the work of the Forestry 
Department. 
The isolation of Westland is a tremendous handicap. On one 
side is a well nigh impassable mountain range and on the other 
an inhospitable sea without a single safe harbor. From Ar- 
thur’s Pass (38,038 ft.) at the north end to Haast Pass (1,800 ft.) 
at the extreme south end there is not a place to cross the 
mountains except by way of high and dangerous passes negot- 
iable only by experienced alpinists. Cattle and produce must 
be sent to market by one or the other of these long routes or by 
rail from Hokitika. The telephone and the mail car have done 
much to relieve this extremely long and linear neighborhood, 
for neighbors they are. A woman runs out to post a letter and 
inquires about Mrs. Blank who lives thirty or forty miles up the 
road and sends a dozen eggs to another some twenty miles 
farther on. Floods which render roads impassable complete 
their isolation at times. At the larger settlements there are 
good schools and town halls for neighborhood gatherings. A 
public nurse looks after eases of illness while the nearest doctor 
is fifty to a hundred miles away. The people hope for a rail- 
way, and the line has been extended to Ross but the track be- 
tween the latter place and Hokitika is little used. During the 
tourist season there is considerable motor travel when the roads 
and weather are favorable. 
FRANZ JOSEF GLACIER 
Our journey ended at Waiho where there is a commodious 
tourist hotel about four miles below the terminus of Franz Josef 
glacier. The approach through the bush is very attractive as 
now and again a glimpse is caught of the glacier face. A sus- 
pension foot bridge over the tumultuous Waiho river, turbid with 
fresh glacial debris, carries us across to another bush which 
covers a series of morainic hillocks directly in line with the 
glacier but still two miles or more away. The Tourist Path has 
been well selected with a view of bringing out effectively the 
setting of the glacier. At one point we catch a brief outline of 
the steep-walled valley in which its lower reaches lie, at another 
a survey of the lofty snowfields, and from a mound among the 
