97 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE VEGETATION OF THE STATION PRIOR TO SETTLEMENT. 



THE two halves of New Zealand are separated by a narrow strait. At 

 the date of their discovery, one the South Island was an open land 

 fit for immediate settlement, carrying nutritious grasses ; the other 

 the North Island was a vast tangle of fern, of scrub, and of forest. 

 In it there was no open country ready to the settler's hand ; the pioneers 

 of the North had to create their pasturage. 



On Tutira grew a few acres of tussock-grass (Poa ccespitosa), a few 

 score acres of flax (Phormium tenax) and of raupo (Typha angustifolia). 

 A few hundred acres also of forest and woodland lay hidden in gorges 

 and ravines. Otherwise, over the whole station stretched an illimitable 

 sea of bracken (Pteris aquilina, var. esculenta). This plant, against 

 which the station has been battling for more than forty years, delights 

 in loose humus, sandy soil, and pumice grit. Into such soils never 

 dry, yet never water-logged its rhizomes penetrate many feet. It is 

 perhaps the only fern which thrives on manure. Year after year it 

 will invade garden-plots ; it will persist season after season in sheep- 

 yards. On ploughed grounds fed with artificials its fronds spring 

 taller, thicker in stem, and of a deeper green. 



In fallen forest country, burnt and elsewhere grassed, every 

 hollow stump eight or ten feet across, into which stock cannot reach, 

 becomes a huge fern - vase. The fenced - in railway lines carry on 

 either side, through cleared bushland, long ribbons of bracken. Inter- 

 mingled with light open bush, I have measured fronds fourteen feet 

 long. So situated, they develop something of the habits of a creeper 

 the stalks becoming finer and more pliable, the lower pinnae abort- 

 ing, the whole frond growing languorous and etiolated. In open lands 

 on Tutira growth was most luxuriant on eastern and southern slopes. 



