Continent; and only to the northward do we find evidence 

 of a former connection with other regions, in the submarine 

 plateau included within the thousand-fathom line of soundings 

 which surrounds New Zealand and its satellite islands, extend- 

 ing nearly as far as New Caledonia, and probably indicating 

 the limits of an ancient continent of which these islands are 

 the sole relics at the present day. 



New Zealand may on the whole be regarded as an eminently 

 diversified and mountainous land, its highest summit. Mount 

 Cook (Aorangi) in the Southern Alps, attaining an elevation 

 of 12,347 feet ; and as the Islands extend over fourteen degrees 

 of latitude, from 34° 25' to 47" 20' S., almost every variety 

 of climate except that of the Tropics may be found within 

 their limits. The rainfall varies from about 25 inches per 

 annum in the drier parts of the South Island, to as much as 

 150 inches in the Sounds on the south-west coast, which are 

 exposed to the full force of the prevailing westerly winds of 

 those latitudes ; and with the usually moderate range of 

 temperature, and the general abundance of sunshine, the 

 conditions throughout the Islands are favourable to vegetable 

 life in an eminent degree. The first European visitors found 

 the whole country, except on the higher slopes of the moun- 

 tains and a few limited lowland tracts, covered with dense 

 forest, which in the dimensions of its individual trees, the 

 luxuriance of the undergrowth, and the profusion of epiphytes, 

 climbing plants and especially of ferns of endless variety and 

 of all sizes, was probably unsurpassed in picturesque beauty 

 and botanical interest anywhere in the Temperate Zone. But 

 over a great area of both Islands this noble forest is but a 

 memory, and has vanished before the axe of the " timber- 

 getter," and even more through the indiscriminate use of 

 fire for clearing the country for agricultural and grazing 

 purposes. In many districts all that remains to tell of its 

 former glories is an occasional decaying log or tree-fern stump 

 on a bare hillside, or a hideous array of miles of charred trunks 

 of once majestic trees, rising from a tangled growth of furze, 

 sweetbriar, and blackberry bramble, more impenetrable than 

 the original " bush " and much more difficult to deal with. 

 Ill the immediate yipimty of soine pf the principal towns, 



