174 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



Now, apart from the altered forms of life to be met with, 

 even a Tennyson could not have written those lines in New 

 Zealand. I am not referring to the young men and their 

 fancies, but to the lack of a marked spring season. The 

 introduction of so many European forms of life tends to 

 remove this impression. And thus, while regretting the 

 disappearance of much that is unique and unreplaceable 

 when our native vegetation disappears before the "im- 

 proving" hand of man, we should yet welcome the sweet 

 change which transforms the face of the country and 

 brings to us promise of the season of summer fruits and 

 harvest bounties. 



II. 



It is a common subject of remark this spring that the 

 season is a late one. After so mild a winter for since June 

 there was no frost worth speaking of it might have been 

 expected that all plant life would have sprung more 

 rapidly into activity, and that the foliage and the blossom 

 would have developed much earlier than has actually been 

 the case. That this has not taken place would seem to 

 show that the cold of winter has little or no retarding 

 action on vegetation, or perhaps, to state it more accurately, 

 that the development of plant life in spring is scarcely 

 dependent upon the winter climate at all. When the 

 foliage is fully developed then lack of heat tells on plants 

 at once. Their function is to use up, as food material, as 

 much carbon dioxide as they can assimilate, and to store 

 up the carbon in the form of starch, sugar, gum, or other 

 similar substance. This they do under the influence of 

 sun's light and heat alone. If these are wanting or are 

 deficient in quantity the plant cannot store up the same 

 amount of reserve. Thus if cold and sunless weather 

 prevails during the growing season of the year the growth 

 of the following season is retarded, and will appear later 

 than usual, as the store of reserve material from which the 

 new leaves and flowers are to be produced is not sufficient. 

 Our late spring, then, is due primarily to the absence of 

 heat during last summer and autumn, so that the plants 



