126 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



in height, which grows commonly in the sandhills along 

 our shores, and is easily recognised by the great drops 

 of milky juice which exude from it when it is cut or 

 broken. The only way to know a thing well is to know 

 it at first hand, and therefore if you want to learn what 

 this juice is like yovi may touch your tongue with ever so 

 little of it. The effect is not immediate, but it gradually 

 reveals itself to your awakened senses as a burning heat 

 which seems to pervade the whole mouth, and which lasts 

 as far as I remember for a couple of hours or so. It 

 is not very painful, at least, a small quantity is not, but 

 it is sxifficiently so to discourage future experiments of the 

 same nature. The flowers in all these Euphorbias are 

 very peculiar. Neither sepals nor petals are present, but 

 at the ends of the branches almost buried among the 

 terminal leaves there appears a flower-like cluster con- 

 sisting of about five bracts, each crowned with a purple 

 crescent -like gland and enclosing two kinds of imperfect 

 flowers. Each staminate flower consists of a single stamen 

 jointed on to a short stalk, and in the midst of a cluster of 

 these stands, or rather hangs, a single pistillate flower with 

 three short styles. Of course, to most people, these flowers 

 do not appear worthy of the name ; but botanists mean 

 by the flowers of a plant its reproductive organs, whether 

 they are showy or not. Of imperfect and inconspicuous 

 flowers this is about as good an example as one could get, 

 because its parts are not too small to be easily made out. 



Most of our succulent-fruited plants have lost their fruit 

 by the beginning of this month at least, in the neigbour- 

 hood of Dunedin but this is probably due to the enormous 

 increase of blackbirds and thrushes. In the denser and 

 less broken portions of the bush many yet retain their 

 fruit, and among these the mistletoes are noteworthy. 

 Five different kinds are found in this neighbourhood, but 

 of these I do not know the fruit of the two species of 

 Viscum,* most curious little leafless parasites, which are 

 not uncommon on manuka, coprosma, and other shrubs, 



* P. Lindsay i and V. salicornioides. 



