SEPTEMBER. 157 



Chapter XL September. 

 I. 



QEPTEMBER is really the first month of Spring in this 

 ^ part of the world, and with its advent we feel that the 

 long dead Winter has waned. The stir and hurry of life 

 increase, the birds sing more blithely, the trees begin to 

 burst into leaf, and "soft airs fan the hills." 



Many native plants now come into flower, and some 

 which have a short and fleeting season will not be met with 

 again till next year such as the delicate little purple 

 orchids Corysanthes triloba and C. nvularis, which are to 

 be met with in damp bush, and especially near creek beds, 

 each with a curious spider-like flower sitting on a solitary 

 heart-shaped leaf. On the Tomahawk Head one meets 

 with Ramuiculus acaulis, a very small stemless Buttercup 

 which seems to send its little blossoms right out of the 

 sandy soil on which it grows ; and mixed with it is another 

 almost inconspicuous herb, Claytonia australasica, with 

 extremely thin-petalled white flowers and small creeping 

 steins. One of the most interesting but rarest of our 

 orchids, Sarcochilus aduei'sus, also flowers this month. 

 It used to grow in the bush at the bend of the Leith Valley 

 near where the paper mill now stands, and this locality 

 now given up to bluestone is where I first gathered it. 

 It still occurs rarely on tree trunks in the bush along the 

 west side of the harbour. An insignificant little plant with 

 very small green flowers, so small that one would never 

 suspect it required insects to fertilise them, it yet exhibits 

 one of those remarkable devices to prevent self -fertilisation 

 such as Darwin revealed to the curious in these matters. 

 I remember that when first I examined these flowers I 

 thought that owing to their inconspicuous appearance they 

 must certainly be self -fertilised ; but, besides being slightly 



