210 NEW ZEALAND. 



one feet in circumference above the roots. There 

 was another close by, which I did not see, thirty- 

 three feet ; and I heard of one no less than forty 

 feet. These trees are remarkable for their smooth, 

 cylindrical bolls, which run up to a height of sixty, 

 and even ninety feet, with a nearly equal diame- 

 ter, and without a single branch. The ci'own of 

 branches at the summit is out of all proportion 

 small to tlie trunk, and the leaves are likewise 

 small compared with the branches. The forest was 

 here almost composed of the kauri ; and the lar- 

 gest trees, from the parallelism of their sides, stood 

 up like gigantic columns of wood. The timber of 

 the kauri is the most valuable production of the isl- 

 airA ; moreover, a quantity of resin oozes from the 

 bark, which is sold at a penny a pound to the Amer- 

 icans, but its use was then unknown. Some of the 

 New Zealand forests must be impenetrable to an 

 extraordinary degree. Mr. Matthews informed me 

 that one forest, only thirty-four miles in width, and 

 separating two inhabited distincts, had only lately, 

 for the first time, been crossed. He and another 

 missionary, each with a party of about fifty men, 

 undertook to open a road ; but it cost them more 

 than a fortnight's labour ! In the woods I saw very 

 few birds. With regard to animals, it is a most re- 

 markable fact, that so large an island, extending 

 over more than 700 miles in latitude, and in many 

 parts ninety broad, with varied stations, a fine cli- 

 mate, and land of all heights, from 14,000 feet down- 

 wards, with the exception of a small rat, did not 

 possess one indigenous animal. The several spe- 

 cies of that gigantic genus of birds, the Deinornis, 

 seem here to have replaced mammiferous quadru- 

 peds, in the same manner as the reptiles still do at 

 the Galapagos Archipelago. It is said that the com- 

 mon Norway rat, in the short space of two years, 



