48 TUTIRA 



soon out-tops the surrounding growth and stands forth in strange 

 arbitrary lines, a record of the past, undecipherable except to those 

 who have watched each stage. 



It is throughout the trough of the run that timber is most evenly 

 distributed as well as most plentiful. On the marls of the east, land- 

 slips perpetually occurring have contributed in no small degree to 

 its disappearance. There it has been swept away, and lies buried 

 deep below the surface. The slower-growing more durable species of 

 tree, moreover, have not had time to establish themselves firmly ; as 

 seedlings and saplings they have been uprooted and rushed downhill 

 in avalanches of earth. 



Besides evidence afforded by timber preserved in water, buried in 

 mud arid marsh, and strewn irregularly over the surface of the run, 

 there are other convincing proofs of an ancient forest. Many portions 

 of the station are so honeycombed with holes and hollows, the result 

 of rotted or burnt-out roots, that they are unsafe to ride over except 

 at a walking pace. 



The trough of the run is marked too by innumerable hummocks, 

 their longitudinal edges running at right angles to the quarter from 

 which blow the most violent gales. They are so numerous, and the 



hummock form so invariable, that 

 it is certain these boles have been 

 levelled by storms from the west 

 and nor'-west. The hummocks scat- 

 tered over the whole of central 

 Hummocks Central Tutira. Tutira denote, too, a forest over- 



blown when dead, not green, in the 



first place destroyed by fire, then uprooted by the prevailing winds. 

 In green New Zealand woods great trees do not readily fall ; not 

 infrequently they are supported by neighbouring trunks, or at any rate 

 their natural angle of fall is deflected by masses of lianes, creepers, 

 and vines. Often they rot away standing, torn to pieces by the kaka 

 parrot (Nestor meridionalis) in search of grubs. 



Lastly, there is a very pretty little bit of evidence afforded by two 

 ferns which could never have established themselves under present 

 conditions. Each of them is a forest species the one, the umbrella fern 

 (Gleichenia Cunninghamii), being usually found on wooded spurs ; the 

 other, a maidenhair (Adiantum diaphanum), on the forest floor itself. 



