168 Essays. 
company with that gentleman, whose friendship it was my privilege to 
enjoy during several years, I ascended several of the mountain ranges of the 
Wairau and Upper Awatere in search of alpine novelties. It was impos- 
sible to have a pleasanter companion, and no one could be more enthusiastic 
-in the cultivation of natural science, or bring to the task a mind better - 
stored with all the requisite knowledge. Seated round the camp fire at 
night, his extensive and minute acquaintance with a wide range of subjects, 
his knowledge of art and science, and his experience, both of men and 
things, derived from enlightened observation in many countries, combined, 
with a cheerful temper, a large fund of anecdote, and a genial philosophy, to 
render his conversation most entertaining and instructive. While he lived 
he was one of the chief contributors to our knowledge of the botany of the 
country. What he did in this way he accomplished chiefly during intervals 
of leisure snatched from the duties of a responsible office. With his time 
entirely at his disposal, as it latterly was, and the whole energies of his 
mind given to the task, a great deal more might have been looked for from 
his researches; and an irreparable calamity befell the cause of science in 
this colony when Dr. Sinclair, then engaged in exploring the botany of the 
central portions of this island, lost his life in the Rangitata River. , 
Regarded as a whole, I should say that the vegetation of the South 
Island was less luxuriant than that of the North. In the former, we miss 
altogether some of the most handsome and striking plants which are to be 
met with in the latter, more particularly in its northern portions. That 
species of Metrosideros, for instance, called by the natives Pohutukawa, so 
beautiful an object in the middle of summer, bending over the salt waters 
of some sheltered harbour, and gorgeous with its bundles of crimson fila- 
ments, is not to be met with in the South. The noble Kauri, one of the 
stateliest and commercially the most valuable of the New Zealand forest 
trees, is not found to the south of Mercury Bay. The Puriri (Vitex littora- 
lis), wider in its range, and abundant about Taranaki, I have never met with 
on the south side of Cook Strait. Charmed with its rich green foliage, 
and the beauty alike of its pink blossom and cherry-like fruit, I have carried 
with me young plants, and endeavoured to naturalize it in my shrubberies at 
Nelson, but could not succeed, for the frosts of our winter nights proved 
fatal to its delicate organization. Another familiar form which one misses 
 inthe south is the shrubby Pomaderris, which clothes the ground so abun- 
dantly in the neighbourhood of Auckland and elsewhere. But if the 
South Island be less abundantly furnished with trees and shrubs than the 
North, it possesses, in its wide extent of pasture, and in the abundance of 
grasses which clothe its eastern plains, and the downs and hilly slopes of its 
interior, a more than ample compensation; for these pastures are a source 
