76 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
To most, if not all, of those terms and idiomatic phrases (of which 
many others could be readily furnished) for the various natural colours 
of red, would be added the thing possessing that particular hue of red in 
the estimation of the speaker; who would also aim to be correct, otherwise 
his comparison, or simile, would be sure to be ventilated and roughly 
handled. Such was generally given with the comparative particle me (like: 
just as) preceding the noun : as,—tino whero, me te pua raataa—of a deep red, 
like the flowers of the raataa tree: whero, me he koura=red, just as a craw- 
fish: whero, me he toto pango=red, like black (or old) blood. There were 
also several other modes of drawing the comparison. 
Of those examples I have given above, I have repeatedly heard a very 
large number of them used. 
Art. IV.—Notes upon the great Floods of February, 1868. 
By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 3rd September, 1881.] 
In February, 1868, the northern part of the South Island was visited by an 
extraordinary rainfall, which did a large amount of damage and left 
indelible marks of its occurrence wherever the waters of the main rivers 
rose above the height of ordinary floods. The general steepness of the 
mountains within this area necessarily causes a rapid superficial drainage, 
and, as a consequence, a rapid erosion and displacement of the materials of 
their surface, so that during heavy rains the channels of all the draining 
streams are not only quickly filled but their waters become heavily charged 
with silt and gravel, which is carried into the main watercourses, converting 
them into huge muddy torrents. Almost all the main rivers in this part 
of the South Island are, in effect, torrents even to their mouths, the 
average slope of their beds being little less than 85 feet to the mile. There 
was, moreover, this peculiarity in the rainfall in question, namely, that the 
quantity which fell within the first few hours was so great as to fill every 
stream bank high, and as the rain continued to fall almost as heavily for many 
hours after that had occurred, the main rivers not only became enormously 
flooded within a singularly short period, but maintained their flooded con- 
dition for an unprecedented length of time. Many causes, too, resulting 
from man’s foolish and wanton interference with natural operations, had 
contributed to bring about a rapid accumulation of the rainfall in the main 
rivers. In the first place, the forest had been cleared by fires and otherwise, 
but principally by fires, from a large extent of the eastern slopes of the 
mountains in the yery localities in which the ordinary rainfall is usually 
