Monro.— Geographical Botany of Nelson and Marlborough. 165 
and more particularly on the western side of the island, will doubtless show 
a very considerable variety of those trees which are met with in the warmer 
valleys of the Northern Island of New Zealand. On the plains and the 
alluvial soils there will be found an abundance of pines, and the flora will 
bear what may be called the ordinary New Zealand aspect. But no sooner 
do we leave the lower levels and rise a few hundred feet along the mountain 
sides, than we find ourselves in a peculiar forest, which occupies the 
ground as exclusively as the pine in the colder parts of the northern hemis- 
phere, or the Eucalyptus in the Australian ranges. We are surrounded 
by evergreen beeches of various sorts; and nothing breaks the monotony of 
the forest save here and there the pale-green rimu, which mostly loves 
the hollows, or the cypress-like foliage and red stem of the hardy Thuja 
doniana, which grows on the summits of the ridges. 
Blind Bay is enclosed between two lofty ranges, which, separated at 
their seaward extremities by a distance of some forty miles, gradually 
approximate, as we trace them southwards, until they coalesce in the ele- 
vated region of the Spencer Mountains. Upon the flanks of these, the 
principal rivers of the northern part of the South Island—the Wairau, the 
. Buller, the Clarence, and the Dillon—take their rise. The eastern arm of 
these two ranges divides Blind Bay from the valley of the Wairau, widening 
as it advances northward, and enclosing between its broken and deeply 
indented fingers the estuaries of the Pelorus. and Queen Charlotte Sound. 
The western arm, wider and loftier, sinks down to the north upon the 
shores of Massacre or Golden Bay, enclosing between its spurs the valleys 
of the Takaka and the Aorere Rivers. These two great ranges are clothed 
with an almost unbroken monotony of evergreen beeches. A botanist 
landing at the head of Queen Charlotte Sound, or where the Pelorus 
River enters the sea, would find a considerable variety of noble trees and 
many most beautiful evergreen shrubs. Where the ground was moistest, 
and indicated the existence of stagnant water, he would be surrounded by 
the grand mast-like stems of the White Pine (Podocarpus dacrydioides), 
generally green with moss, and often festooned with climbing parasites. 
On the drier ground he would find the Mai, or Red Pine (Podocarpus 
spicata), cleaner in the bark, less mast-like than the former, and carrying a 
greater head of foliage. On the still drier ground there would be the noble 
Totara (Podocarpus totara), ten feet, perhaps, in diameter, or even more, 
with its brown bark scaling off in long vertical strips, and its branches 
shooting athwart one another with the picturesqueness of the old English 
Oak. Mixed up with these he might find the Pukatea (Atherosperma nove- 
zealandie), with its bright green foliage, its pale grey bark, and deep parietal 
buttresses; the Tawa (Nesodaphne tawa), and the Kowhai (Edwardsia 
