PEDESTRIANS 



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remember against the northern edge of the Bluff in Napier, along the 

 clay blinding of the beach road between Napier and Petane, and again 

 at intervals and in similar situations between Petane and Tangoio. For 

 years at the latter place it halted, unable to subsist on the colder clays, 

 grassy tops, and higher altitudes of the old pack-track. With the new 

 road, however, it crept up, selecting spots, the very poles apart from 

 those chosen by pearl-wort and other waders. Sun, dust, and drought 

 exactly suit this wild barley ; cliff bases and sun-baked cuttings harbour 

 it ; now that the plant has reached the run it delights to live facing the 

 north, squeezed up for choice against the lowest rails of arid sheep- 

 yards, for though it can subsist in almost any desert, 

 it is no scorner of good food. 



Beard grass (Polypogon monspeliensis) I have 

 watched travelling up from Taradale, five miles be- 

 yond Napier. When first seen in '82 this grass was 

 thriving on wretched-looking land scarcely above the 

 reach of the tides ; then years later it appeared on 

 the edge of the saline lands near Petane, then again 

 after a long interval about a small surface pond at the 

 wet base of the Coastal Hill, where so many travelling 

 aliens have found a temporary resting-place and re- 

 cruiting-ground. Another haltingrplace was the water- 

 sodden land about Tangoio. From there onward it 

 became a wader, paddling ankle-deep along several 

 of the more suitable damp spots on the dray-road, 

 three or four comrades together, never in large companies. Its first grip 

 of the run was on the marl water-tables a few hundred yards from the 

 Waikoau Bridge. Its chief hold on Tutira now is about the broad, wet, 

 shallow crossings of the Kai-tera-tahi swamp. 



Another beard grass (Polypogon fugax), which reached Tutira 

 several years later, was first noticed on the salt marshes of Petane ; it 

 also, like its relative, whilst moving inland took advantage of wet 

 ditches and water-tables. 



Reversed clover (Trifolium resupinum) was earliest discovered where, 

 rising from Tangoio, the road emerges on to pumiceous hills from the 

 White Pine Bush. There for some years a fence crossed the dray- 

 road, the closed gate of which, until tossed from its hinges by an irate 

 drover, temporarily delayed the progress of travelling stock. This brief 



Beard Grass. 



