62 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
were at hand; and the remarks would arise simply from the difference in 
the colour of the greens,—some being well-done, and some (hurriedly) half- 
done; some freshly gathered, and some stale ; the food having been quickly 
cooked for them by two or three different persons; the little baskets severally 
brought in ; and, according to etiquette, none touched until all were in and 
placed (as, indeed, with us). It was owing to this finely-developed faculty 
that they knew so well, and from a distance, whether the annual summer 
luxuries obtained from the female flowers of the kiekie plant, and from the 
pollen of the raupo, were in season, and ready for collecting or not,— 
through the slight change in the green of the tips of their leaves,—and so 
saved themselves the labour of climbing, etc., purposely to ascertain. 
And here I may mention another little botanical incident, which indeed 
not unfrequently occurred in our deep forest travelling. And to those 
present who may have travelled through, or even only entered into, an 
uncleared standing New Zealand forest in all its pristine glory, such a 
relation may almost seem marvellous. In those umbrageous forests the 
large trees are generally completely covered with all manner of plants 
growing thickly on their trunks and branches, as freely, or even more so, 
than if on the ground beneath. And there, sometimes, nestling among 
them, yet far away, high up, would be a rare fern or Lycopodium, or some 
small epiphytical shrub, as Pittosporum cornifolium, or a Loranthus, or @ 
Viscum, or a still smaller plant of Peperomia; and yet all those (and 
many more) were severally made known to us below by their slight 
difference in hue; and so, through the quick and fine discernment of my 
Maori friends, I sometimes gained some desirable specimens. The obtaining 
of one such I would more particularly relate, as it is an excellent example 
of what I have just mentioned, and one never to be forgotten by me. It 
was my discovery (at the north, in 1841), of that rare pine, manoao 
(Dacrydium colensoit, Hook.). I had heard of it from the old Maoris, but 
none had seen one for several years, as they grew singly in the dense 
forests, and the young Maoris did not even know it! On one occasion, 
however, when travelling through the trackless forest near the coast between 
the Bay of Islands and Whangarei, we (or rather one elderly Maori then 
with me) kept a look-out for it. Now this “pine,” in its foliage, etc., 
closely resembled some others of the class,—as the kahikatea, the rimu, 
etc.,—especially when at the distance of the top of a high tree, but the keen 
eye of the old Maori detected it at last (though I, and the other younger 
Maoris with me, could not make out any difference, owing to the distance). 
And then, for my pocket-knife, he undertook the ugly job of climbing the 
tree, and breaking off a branch for me. In this case it was more the 
peculiar shade of green of the foliage, though distant, than anything else 
