THE SOILS OF TUTIRA PAST AND PRESENT 25 



evenly distributed on the bottoms. Moreover, even supposing that the 

 grit had become submerged in a level band, upon the rise of the plateau 

 its surface would have dried and the light top-dressing of pumice would 

 have been dispersed by gales. Lastly, there is nothing in the appear- 

 ance of freshly-exposed red sand beds to suggest that weighted water- 

 clogged grit has rested upon them. Its grains have not become in- 

 corporated in any considerable degree with the lower-lying material. It 

 seems to me that whilst there are insuperable objections in the one case, 

 there is nothing hard of belief in the other. 



The volcanic mountains Tongariro, Ngaruhoe, Ruapehu, are all 

 within a hundred miles of Tutira. During the Tarawera eruption of 

 '86 the run would have been thickly dusted with fine grit had the wind 

 happened to have blown towards it. On east Tutira flake pumice is 

 rare ; there are banks of it on Maungaharuru varying in size from a 

 crown- piece to a man's palm. The Mohaka river, rising in the chief region 

 of volcanic activity in New Zealand, bears in flood-time from its fountain- 

 head quantities of sponge-shaped blocks ; in fact, the size and shape of 

 pumice fragments differ according to distance from source of supply. 



The dark, dusty, matted humus of the surface requires little descrip- 

 tion. There can be no doubt that it is the most modern soil of the 

 run, the outcome of rotted fern fronds, forest debris and fine dust, blown 

 from burnt forests and bracken lands. 



From the foregoing description of the soils and subsoils of the run, 

 it is apparent how poor the original surface on every part of the run has 

 been. It is apparent, too, that any surface improvement can only have 

 taken place by the superposition of limestone, travertine, marl, and 

 sand, by an admixture of soils due to overblown forests, and by the 

 deepening of vegetable mould. From a sheep-farmer's point of view, 

 the original state of Tutira must have been worthless : indeed for him 

 New Zealand even now has been discovered and Tutira "taken up" 

 many hundreds of thousands of years too soon. 



In another chapter the reader has been, I hope, helped to grasp the 

 general configuration of the station by the metaphor of the "comb." 

 With equal ease he will understand its soils, if another salient fact of 

 another sort be grasped. It is this, that the fertility of the run is in 

 direct proportion to its angle of inclination, that the steepest country is 

 the best, the flattest country alluvial flats excepted the worst. From 



