RAMBLES ROUND DUNEDIN. 



mount the ascent before us. Quickly the nature of the 

 ground changes, becoming soft and yielding under foot. 

 Swampy Hill is so named because its surface is in so many 

 parts covered with a dense growth of Sphagnum moss, 

 which has produced large beds of peat, in which are 

 situated considerable lagoons and pools of brown bog water. 

 These deep sphagnum beds, which hold water like a sponge, 

 and into which one sinks halfway to the knees, are among 

 the most interesting botanising grounds in the neighbour- 

 hood of Dunedin. Only the upper portions of the plants 

 are alive. The tips of the branches are pale green, and 

 they chiefly grow by a process of mere vegetative repro- 

 duction, new buds constantly giving rise to new branches, 

 but spore capsules being difficult to find. At a depth of a 

 few inches the stems appear white and blanched, and as we 

 penetrate lower into the mass we find them turning 

 yellowish, and then brown, till finally we pass into the 

 blackish half-formed peat. Its mode of growth raises the 

 whole level of the surface, and as water accumulates in 

 the mass it often happens that the centre of a wide bed of 

 sphagnum dies away or is drowned, while the outside 

 continues to grow till a lagoon is formed. Such peat 

 mosses, with their contained lagoons, are common in many 

 parts of Otago, and are not infrequently found on the 

 highest ground, as on the summit of Maungatua, of the 

 Blue Mountains near Tapanui, and here on Swampy Hill. 

 They must have been even more abundant in former epochs, 

 for much of the brown coal or so-called Lignite of this 

 part of New Zealand has been formed from peat. 



The peat-forming plants are not all sphagnum, though 

 this is the basis. We meet with species of Coprosma, 

 Gaultheria, Xertera, and many sub- Alpine Sedges, while the 

 beds are gay in midsummer with mimerous small orchids 

 (species of Caladenia, Chiloglottis, and Lyperanthus), 

 Helophyllum, Forstera, and other pretty Alpines. Upon 

 this high ground, which owing to its very wetness has not 

 been swept by the fires which have destroyed so much of 

 the vegetation all round, we are on an outlying spur of 

 the mountain vegetation of Central Otago ; and here we 



