176 TUTIRA 



and suckling clover seed, that summer, shared a like fate. Each time 

 Harry Young and myself rode through the paddock, we searched on 

 hands and knees for the well-known and dreaded manuka seedlings. 

 There were none to be seen ; they were destroyed that summer 

 by alternate warm rains and arid gales. That otherwise hundreds 

 of millions of cotyledons must have germinated on every rood 

 of the paddock we were assured of, for about the rims of damp spots 

 on the hills, along the edges of the winding oozy creeks, they sprang 

 up like grass on a wet seed-bag. 



The fern, no longer a necessary ally, once more became an un- 

 desirable, and now for the first time Microelena stipoides and Danthonia 

 semiannularis leaped on to the vacated stage. In descriptions of 

 former periods I have been cautious to show that though these hardy 

 grasses had been reduced to a fraction of their proper growth, and that 

 although they were an inconspicuous factor in the herbage of the 

 paddock, yet they had not been utterly destroyed. 



Period after period in the progress of the paddock they had survived 

 under cruel deprivations ; now, stimulated by freedom to breathe, their 

 recuperation was a marvel. On every ridge and spur cleared by 

 the axe, appeared a broad band of native grass. In other localities 

 where dead thickets of unfallen manuka stood stiffly impenetrable to 

 stock, danthonia and microelena, guarded by dead lateral branches, rushed 

 into being and seeded freely. What had appeared formerly to be mori- 

 bund stools on the sides of paths and about pig-rootings, as if by magic 

 multiplied themselves. The magic was but light and air ; there had in 

 truth been, at the termination of the fifth period, more native grass than 

 had been reckoned ; stunted, dwarfed, depauperated, throttled, only a few 

 spindly blades showing from every crown, it had been passed over. 

 During this first season of its triumph on the Rocky Staircase, I feel 

 positive that no grass seedlings appeared. Conditions that had withered 

 the manuka cotyledons had also destroyed all other germination ; the 

 sudden show of native grass was altogether from old plants rejuvenated 

 by light and air. 



After this first season of the sixth period these hardy natives con- 

 tinued rapidly to increase. The seed-stems of both species grow with un- 

 common rapidity, and attain maturity even in heavily-stocked paddocks. 

 From the hill-tops and ridge-caps their seed was blown by the wind, poured 



