MARCH. 73 



extreme beauty and rich succulence of the fruit, especially 

 in the inland and western parts of Otago, and the abundance 

 and great range of the species, point to their free use as 

 food by birds. The common Muhlenbeckia, a pale green 

 climber found on the edge of the bush throughout the 

 Town Belt, has much the same device of succulent floral 

 envelopes, but this plant belongs to the same family as 

 the dock, while the snowbei'ry,* possessing the same 

 style of fruit, is a heath. 



A pretty example of this development of succulent fruit 

 is to be seen commonly in the Town Belt just now in the 

 hina-hma (Melicytns raniiflorus). This plant belongs to 

 the same family as the violet and pansy, and if the unripe 

 fruit of these be taken and cut across, each will be found 

 to have a hollow ovary with three rows of seeds fastened 

 on the walls. Yet, in accordance with their different 

 modes of distribution, they ripen in a different manner ; in 

 the violets the walls become dry and split open by three 

 valves, but the hina-hina depends on some bird to distribute 

 its seeds, so its seed-vessel does not open but becomes 

 fleshy. The branches are just now covered with these 

 blue-black or purplish berries, which are very pretty to look 

 at and are no doubt sufficiently attractive to birds to serve 

 as food to them ; yet their succulence is almost a negligeable 

 quantity. It is a fact that, just as the Maoris seem to have 

 been content with, or at least dependent on, vegetable 

 products of a very inferior quality for food, so the birds of 

 these islands had in most cases to content themselves with 

 very poor stuff in the way of fruit. Even where genera 

 are alike in different lands, as in the case of the genus 

 Rubus, the New Zealand species compare very unfavourably 

 with others. The European and American blackberries 

 and raspberries are very different from the fruit of the 

 native bramble. Indeed, all our native fruits lack sugar. 



Birds are not the only carriers of seeds ; animals which 

 have fur or hair serve to convey other species about. 

 Naturally one would expect in a country which had no 



* Gaultlieria antipoda. 



