256 



TUTIRA 



Bladder Campion. 



bladder-campion (Silene inflata), and woolly thistle (Cnicus eriophorus). 

 Besides the new-comers named, several other weeds had also managed to 

 secrete themselves among the fodder-plants sown on the experimental 



farm; as, however, they had already reached 

 the run at earlier dates and in other ways, they 

 need not again be specified. 



Undeniable as it is that too much dirty 

 seed is each year placed on the market, yet the 

 spread of weeds is inevitable. Greater care 

 might at best stave off the evil hour of their 

 arrival ; no legislation can completely check 

 their journey ings from spot to spot. Not only 

 do they travel in the seed, they cling to the 

 sacks themselves. In this way have arrived 

 wheat (Triticum sativum), barley (Hordeum 

 vulgare), turnip (Brassica napus), rape (Bras- 

 sica rapa), white goose-foot (Chenopodium 

 album), evening primrose ((Enothera oderata), 

 small flowered buttercup (Ranunculus parvi- 

 florus), wood poa (Poa nemoralis), and parsnip (Peucedanum sativum) 

 also, though it had already appeared and is mentioned elsewhere. 



During the progress of contract work done at any considerable dis- 

 tance from the homestead ploughing, fencing, grass-seed sowing, and 

 draining camps are established ; about them rubbish accumulates in 

 a marvellous way, the untidy premises soon becoming strewn with torn 

 bags and littered with old filthy sacks, many of which conceal stowaways. 

 Straggling plants of wheat, cape-barley, turnips and rape, are nearly 

 always to be found on such spots. Wheat and cape-barley have never 

 been sown or used as horse-feed on Tutira, they have arrived jammed in 

 corners of sacks or tangled in interstices of their rough material. Oats, 

 too, many times I have found on seed-sowers' camps, where the plant could 

 not have been carried in by machinery or borne in the bodies of hard-fed 

 horses. If the species named have thus reached the run, no doubt other 

 weeds, especially crop weeds, are passed over the colony by rail, coach, 

 and dray in surprisingly brief periods. 



The average life of a sack is, I daresay, about five years, each sack in 

 its time playing many parts. 



Starting at the Bluff, the southernmost port of the South Island, a 



