IO6 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



which could be gathered, and here the entomologist was 

 always sure in the warmer months of the year to meet 

 with good finds. But the destruction of the bush has dried 

 up the streams, and the poaching of cattle round its 

 margins has converted part of the lake into a boggy 

 swamp. Now that the age of destruction has passed, an 

 era of improvement might well be inaugurated by the 

 surrounding proprietors, and with a little care and some 

 judicioiis planting the spot might again be transformed 

 into a place of beauty. The introduction of white and 

 yellow water lilies, of the Yellow Flag (Ins pseud-acorusj, 

 and of the large yellow buttercup (Ranunculus lingua}, 

 would soon brighten its surface and edges with blossom. 

 There are many pretty marsh plants of temperate regions 

 which would thrive in its waters, and a sheet of water 

 which at present is not particularly attractive, except at a 

 distance, might be made a thing of beauty and hence 

 a joy for ever. 



I can remember that in very high tides the sea used 

 to dispvite the entrance up to and past the spot where the 

 bridge now stands, but at present the whole lagoon is 

 a sheet of fresh water right down to its mouth, and its 

 level is not affected at all by the tide. But it cannot 

 be very long since that it was a tidal inlet. A glance along 

 the whole coast line of Otago from Kaitangata to the 

 Waikouaiti River shows that the land has risen at no very 

 distant date. At the present time we see going on in 

 its various stages the process by which arms and inlets of 

 the sea are being converted into flat plains. 



Let us cross the bridge and, climbing on to one of the 

 sandhills which hide the ocean from the road, sit down for 

 a few minutes, and let our minds go back in imagination 

 to the days of old, say, when the coast line stood twenty 

 feet or thirty feet lower than it does to-day. A lake, 

 probably of brackish water, at any rate at its middle 

 portion, filled the lower part of the Taieri Plain, stretching 

 away up to the foot of Maungatua and the lower Waipori 

 Hills, away south beyond the present end of Lake 

 Waihola, and communicating with the sea by the very 



