AND OTHER BIEDS 85 



age, and each with its parasol unfurled. Then 

 the growth itself of the larger trees, differs from 

 that of our more tropical northern bush. There 

 the rich soils nourish an upright brood of trees ; 

 here in Stewart Island the kamahi and iron- 

 wood, like infants, creep before they walk, and 

 from their boles, prostrate in youth, arise in later 

 years an equality of rival stems, just as from 

 pegged-down shoots in a rosery, burst upright 

 growths. 



Through these forest lands, more open than 

 those of the warmer north and barer of 

 supple-jack and vine, distance is visible. On 

 all sides arise the naked boles of clean trees, that 

 slough their skins as loose skirtings or innumer- 

 able scales, and thus discard their orchid, fern, 

 and epiphytic growths. From verdure below to 

 verdure aloft they rise, piercing twixt earth and 

 sky, a diaphanous mist, a twilight greenery, that 

 veils a section of each stem, and in a shadowy 

 way bisects each bole. This strange effect is 

 owing to the habit of growth of several of the 

 coprosma tribe, shrubs of some fifteen or twenty 

 feet in height, free of branches beneath, and 

 bearing in layers their greenery on top. This 

 is, of course, the general effect, never sharp 

 cut or clearly defined, and differing in 

 degree in every dell and glen. The trunks 

 nevertheless, in parts of this open forest, are 

 distinct from the ground upwards to fifteen 

 or twenty feet, then become veiled in 

 the coprosma tops, for a second time to re- 

 appear, unclad and clean of the ferns and para- 

 sitic growths so comparatively scant in these 

 forests of the South. There is the strange result, 

 therefore, of three tiers of growth; the lowest, 



