STOWAWAYS 



255 



Viscid Bartsia. 



Near that hill 



every province in New Zealand, is legislation attempted. Thus at a 



date when Hawke's Bay settlers were being compelled to cut Californian 



thistle, I noticed elsewhere, in a district from which 



large consignments of oats and oaten chaff were 



forwarded over the whole colony, three different 



oat-fields of from ten to fifteen acres each heavily 



infested with patches of corn thistle in full bloom. 



Small holdings, thorough tillage, not legislation, are 



the cure for undesirable aliens. 



The surface sowing of felled forest-land on the 

 distant Maungaharuru block introduced viscid Bartsia 

 (Bartsia viscosa), the grass seed amongst which this 

 stowaway reached the run having been drayed to the 

 station. Had it been packed, the chances are that 

 the weed would have been first noticed between 

 Tangoio and the Tutira wool-shed, whereas I did not 

 pick up the line of the blossoming plant until near 

 "The Dome." It told a story easily decipherable, 

 during the previous autumn a pack-load had evidently been ripped ; 

 between the spot where I first detected the plant and the boundary 

 gate separating Putorino and Tutira, seed had 

 been jogged out in considerable quantity. 

 After the boundary gate the plant altogether 

 ceased. There, where the horses had been 

 stopped, the packman had doubtless noticed 

 the rent, and stuffed or plugged it. No more 

 specimens at any rate appeared, until three 

 miles further on, when the fallen bush was 

 reached ; there once again I found the new- 

 comer sown inadvertently, flourishing in pro- 

 fusion, sharing the soil with its rightful owners 

 purposely imported plants, like rye, clover, 

 and cock's-foot. 



In 1910, when about to handle the arid 

 centre of the run, four new stowaways appeared 

 on my experimental plots for dry country fodder- 

 plants corn-cockle (Lychnis githago), sheep's-bit (Jasione montana), 



Corn Cockle. 



