Travers.—Comparison of the Floras of Nelson and Canterbury. 177 
(twenty-five feet high and twenty inches in diameter) in the northern parts 
of Nelson, is reduced almost to a shrub, growing only in warm, sheltered 
spots on Banks Peninsula. Araliacee, Pittosporee, and Rubiacee are 
little represented as compared with the numbers of species and varieties 
in the Nelson district. Many Veronicas usually found at considerable 
elevations in the latter, are frequent in the lower grounds of Canterbury, 
The number of composite plants of the same species is apparently more 
equal, and little if any difference is to be found in a large proportion of 
Myrtacee, which are common to both districts. The Areca sapida grows in 
some parts of Banks Peninsula, but by no means in the numbers or so 
luxuriantly as in the palm groves of Wakapuaka or Massacre Bay. Of 
the tree-ferns, Cyathea medullaris is not found there, and I was particularly 
struck by the absence of all those beautiful species of Trichomanes and 
Hymenophyllum which abound in and adorn the warm, sheltered woods of 
the Nelson valleys. 
In these remarks I have confined myself to the forest vegetation of the 
eastern parts of the two districts, and indeed it is chiefly in these localities 
that we detect any very marked differences in that portion of the two floras. 
As before observed, the western sides of the mountain chains jn each dis- 
trict are covered with dense forest, and except that in Canterbury the line 
of the Fagus does not reach a greater altitude than about 4,200 feet, 
whilst in Nelson it attains, if it does not even exceed, 5,000, the only 
difference I observed in the forest as we proceed to the south is, that it 
becomes more homogeneous in character, various species of Fagus, with 
occasional but rare patches of Metrosideros and Dacrydium cupressinum, 
there forming the greater bulk of the whole. A line of a species of 
Dracophyllum (the specific name of which is unknown to me) stretches 
from Mount Arthur spur on the western side of Blind Bay, down to the 
Teremakau saddle in the Canterbury district, the trees, however, gradually 
diminishing in size to the southward, notwithstanding a gradual diminution 
in the altitude at which they grow. 
It is found, too, that except in very favourable localities the size and 
durability, in its economical applications, of the Fagus timber is far less in 
the Canterbury district than in the northern parts of Nelson. 
On the whole, however, it may be said that, with the exception of such 
variations as are likely to be due indirectly to the influences of climate, the 
great forests on the western side of the two districts present very little 
difference in composition or other character. 
There is also a specific identity in the principal grasses and in man 
other of the herbaceous plants found in the pastoral lands of both districts, 
considered in regard to horizontal or latitudinal distribution, though in 
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