298 TUTIRA 



in the mud. About sheep-yards, too, provided there is a sufficiency of 

 manure, it is content to lie squeezed along the lowest rails of the dusty 

 pens. 



Another mallow, small -leaved mallow (Malva pawiflora), has 

 closely resembled its relative in mode of travel and preferences. 



In the late 'eighties buckshorn plantain (Plantago coronopus) 

 appeared about the railway crossing at Port Ahuriri. 

 A year later it was thickly spread on all suitable 

 sites along the beach road as far as the dry flats 

 beyond the Petane river, where it grew in vast pro- 

 fusion. After a year's absence in England I found 

 the plant densely carpeting the Coastal Hill camp. 

 There was in the same year so thick a sward of it 

 also on the Tutira home paddock that probably 

 Buckshorn Plantain, the weed had been missed by me on its first arrival 

 on the run. An alien, as I have before said, suited 

 by soil and climate, appears in the ratio of unit, hundred and tens 

 of thousands. I had overlooked the unit stage. The plant was probably 

 flourishing in hundreds during my year's visit to the old country. 

 By the date of my return it had again increased enormously. It 

 has now, after the manner of so many new-comers, died back to normal 

 growth, and is chiefly noticeable during dry seasons when the turf is 

 brown and withered. 



Vervain ( Verbena officinalis), a species few would suspect of harm, 

 but which by overrunning grass has proved a nuisance in a small way, 

 is an alien of note. It has invaded us from the north, a quarter from 

 which comparatively few road-plants have come. Its proper name has 

 been temporarily lost, it has been renamed, and, what must be almost 

 unique in popular botanical nomenclature, that name again lost and the 

 plant locally rechristened ; finally, it has reassumed its correct designa- 

 tion. This alien from southern England appeared near Frazertown in 

 the late 'seventies. It was first noticed on a station belonging to Mi- 

 Nairn ; there it began to spread, and there it became known as Nairn's 

 weed ; the station then became the property of the late Mr Griffin. 

 Now Mr Griffin, as chairman of the Wairoa County Council, touched 

 the business and bosom of every up-country settler in the district. 

 People knew him who did not know and had never known his pre- 

 decessor ; his office advertised the plant ; presently, even in the 



