292 . TUTIRA 



From northern ports, too, such as the Bay of Islands and Gisborne, 

 pedestrian weeds have also reached the station ; accommodation pad- 

 docks of roadside inns, drovers' camps, and Maori villages have, as in 

 the south, proved their chief recruiting - grounds and multiplication 

 centres. 



Of these pedestrians, the blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) was, if not 

 the earliest, one of the earliest to move inland. It stands forth that 

 fatal and perfidious plant, sown in the eclipse and dug with curses 

 dark as the single alien that is the master of the sheep, the one plant 

 that makes a victim of him. Its normal habit in the open is to grow 

 into an oval bush. Specimens thus shaped expend their energies harm- 

 lessly or comparatively so, although each season the base of the bush 

 increases. Should, however, one of these tall cones be burnt, spread is 

 accelerated laterally ; huge horizontal shoots are sent forth, tentacles 

 by which the victim is seized. A sheep but newly caught and still but 

 loosely gripped exhibits an instance of inert brainlessness almost un- 

 imaginable ; although one determined pull would free the animal, he yet 

 suffers himself to remain anchored by a single strand. Tethered thus, 

 further entanglement is but a matter of time ; wool and bramble shoots 

 become woven and twisted into a rope, until finally the sheep dies 

 and its carcase goes to feed the triumphant plant. Perhaps unlimited 

 time only is required to develop out of Rubus fruticosus a sheep- 

 catching plant with more enormous shoots and yet stronger thorns. 



No good word can be urged for the unhappy plant ; not even its 

 fruit, borne in vast quantities but lacking flavour, can excuse or even 

 condone its iniquities. How and when the blackberry reached New 

 Zealand I know not. Its importation is often, I believe, erroneously 

 ascribed to the much-abused missionary ; certain it is that the weed has 

 not come into Hawke's Bay from the north. Its local origins are Petane 

 and Tangoio, where long prior to my time stretches of blackberry hedge 

 had been planted. 



We can now follow inland the march of this terrible pedestrian. 

 After leaving Petane the road for some distance ran parallel to one of 

 these planted fences, a brazen example of a vested interest, for when 

 at a later time blackberries were attacked with poison and spade, this 

 hedge, grey in its hoary iniquity, was spared. There were several 

 bushes scattered about the sandy hummocks of flood-silt in the Esk 

 river - bed. Throughout the native cultivations, where there are now 



