FERN-CRUSHING 167 



upper portions of the slopes, positions dear to all sheep and especially 

 to the timorous merino. 



As might have been anticipated from what the reader has already 

 been told, a knowledge, however, then unattained by the writer and 

 his partner, this attempt to grass the Rocky Staircase was a com- 

 parative failure. On the worst portion of the paddock the seed failed to 

 germinate ; on rather better soils it held out feebly for one or two 

 seasons, but everywhere its grip weakened with lapse of time. It 

 was discovered, too, that on large areas of the paddock, sheep would 

 starve rather than eat the fern fronds. On other portions, only with 

 difficulty could they be forced to crop the shoots. 



The result was that the worst parts of the paddock immediately 

 relapsed into bracken ; that another immense proportion became over- 

 grown with hardly less rapidity ; that only the steepest that is, the 

 best portions of the block remained open to the sun and air for any 

 length of time. A fresh process of fern expansion in fact recommenced 

 in spite of us, its progress synchronising with the gradual failure 

 of the sown grasses and clovers. At the termination of this second 

 phase in the history of the Rocky Staircase, the paddock appeared to 

 have reverted almost to its original vegetation, except indeed for the 

 establishment of certain sheep camps, oases of deepest, most luxuriant 

 green. 1 There had occurred, nevertheless, certain great, albeit hidden 

 changes. The tops had been heavily trodden by stock ; light had been 

 allowed to reach the ground in some parts for a season or two only, 

 in others for three or four years. The seeds, though few and far 

 between, of plants already enumerated as having been blown by wind 

 or borne by stock, had before their final smothering managed to mature 

 and sow themselves abroad. There had taken place, too, a slight per- 

 manent widening in the strips of native grasses beneath the clifis. 

 On hard hill-tops and narrow ridges and knobs, danthonia and microelena 

 had grouped themselves in little companies. Where pig had tunnelled 



1 The continued enrichment of these camps month after month, year after year, decade 

 after decade, where night by night thousands of sheep concentrate on small areas, has been for 

 forty seasons very distressing to Harry Young and myself, constantly scheming as overseer 

 and owner how to provide more grass for our sheep. The waste of ammonia on soil already 

 enriched beyond all reason has been the more vexatious in view of the glaring needs of 

 the arid areas around. Picturing the surrounding land as it might have been but for 

 the conservative habits of stock, almost involuntarily have the words rushed to my lips, 

 " I say, Harry, wouldn't it be grand if sheep only wouldn't always pee on the same place ? " 

 and often have I heard his responsive sympathetic sigh, "Ah, sir, Tutira would be like 

 heaven then." 



