352 Mr James Coutts Crawford on 



or common bent grass, and Elymus arenarius, or sea lyme 

 grass, from Messrs Lawson of Edinburgh. 



I employed a careful man to sow this seed over a large 

 area of land, burying it sufficiently with a spade. The 

 locality was one very much exposed to both north-west 

 and south-east winds, lying partly between Lyall and 

 Evans Bays, at Wellington, and altogether open to Lyall 

 Bay and the southerly winds. 



The climate of New Zealand, although sufficiently rainy, 

 is much more elastic and buoyant than that of Great 

 Britain ; the ground dries much more rapidly after rain, 

 and therefore there is more facility for the wind causing 

 the sand to drift. 



For several years after sowing the seeds I observed no 

 signs of the required plants, but at last I found about half 

 a dozen bunches of them in a small and sheltered glen. 

 I found that upon pulling up one of these bunches I could 

 divide the roots into a number of plants, perhaps from fifty 

 to two hundred. These T planted out, and in the following 

 year had a number of additional plants upon which to 

 operate, and the planting has since gone on steadily increas- 

 ing until several hundred acres are now secure from risk. 



The sand once fixed by the bent, clovers, and other 

 grasses take root, and a fair pasture is established. 



These operations took me a long time. They have 

 already gone on for over twenty years, and they are still in 

 progress ; but I had to educate myself up to the system, and 

 find out by experience the best plan of operations, and 

 therefore there was much loss of time. 



All the manuals on the subject recommend different 

 plans of sowing the sand-fixing grasses. Now I found 

 that sowing was practically of little or no use at all. The 

 seeds germinated, but were almost invariably blown out, 

 and entirely disappeared in the course of a few months. 

 It is advisable to sow a patch in a sheltered place to form a 

 nursery for plants, but it is of little use to sow on open sand. 



I next found that it was of little use to plant shallow. 

 The plants were either blown out or were gradually turned 

 over, so that eventually the leaves were buried and the 

 roots were in the air. 



At length I found that if the spade was put down as 



