FERN-CRUSHING 175 



Work which could not formerly have been undertaken with any hope 

 of return, now became at least worth the risk inseparable from any 

 improvement. The crests and crowns of the paddock were cleared 

 of manuka by axe-work ; several hundred acres of manuka were also 

 felled on certain slopes and valleys. Another innovation, now also for 

 the first time determined upon, was an alteration in the date of 

 firing the paddock. Until this sixth period fires had been lighted 

 in autumn, weather permitting, late in February. This custom had 

 been followed for two good reasons : to provide autumn food whilst 

 another block elsewhere was " spelling," and to break the exuberance 

 of frond-growth during the following spring. Now, however, that 

 manuka had overrun the paddock to such a dangerous degree, a clean 

 burn had become all important. Vegetation, such as fern and scrub, 

 is never so dry as in late spring, when fresh fronds of bracken, new 

 shoots of manuka, that damp the matted mass with sappy growth, have 

 not appeared, when the rays of the sun have once again grown fierce. 

 It was determined that the paddock should be burnt out in spring. 



Partly owing to an extraordinary dry day in an abnormally dry spring, 

 partly owing to the extra heat of many hundred acres of fallen scrub, 

 the Kocky Staircase was swept as bare of green stuff as in the early 

 'eighties. There was this difference though, that the paddock then had 

 been black ; now it took its colour from the fire-swept manuka. In spite 

 of the extra heat of the spring fire, wide areas of the paddock had been 

 rather scorched and scalded than burnt. The harsh small leaves of the 

 manuka had fallen, the bark hung in grey frayed tatters. The plant 

 had so increased during the preceding six-year period that the general 

 colour of the paddock was greyish, not black as in '82. 



It cannot be maintained that Tutira generally has been helped by 

 its weather ; on the contrary, climatic conditions have been malignantly 

 unkind. The summer of 1912 was an exception to the rule. Had it 

 been wet, had even a fair proportion of rain fallen, huge areas of the 

 block must have permanently reverted to manuka ; instead, the summer 

 proved to be a long series of terrific gales interspersed with half-inch 

 showers. These rains, falling from time to time on the baking surface, 

 temporarily made the ground a hotbed. Seeds germinated as if forced 

 under glass. Renewed gales then blew from the hot nor'-west and 

 scorched the tender cotyledons. Weed seeds, grass seeds, manuka seed, 



