NS 
Ponp.—On the Sugar Values of Beet-roots. 365 
to compete against a hardy indigenous vegetation, its increase has certainly 
been rapid, especially within the last two years. It now formsa dense mass 
sixty yards in circumference ; the intermediate vegetation, Leptospermum, 
Pieris, and Pomaderris, is sienaat completely destroyed. From the main 
mass seeds are being disseminated in a line with the prevailing winds. 
Probably the reason that E. microphylla has become so firmly established 
in its new habitat is that when the seeds (or seed) fell they met with favour- 
able conditions; that is, they germinated in a moist loamy hollow, and 
being unpalatable to all kinds of stock escaped destruction. 
As to how it was introduced, I can only satisfactorily account for it on 
the hypothesis that the seeds were carried over from Australia by aerial 
currents ; it isnot improbable that was the way E. purpurascens (discovered 
nearly forty years ago by the late Dr. Sinclair) reached Manurewa, four 
miles N.E. of the present station of E. microphylla. Upwards of 1,300 
miles may seem an enormous distance for seeds to be transported across 
the sea, independent of oceanic currents; and I would have hesitated in 
asserting that that was the way E. microphylla was introduced, only that I 
cannot account for its having reached so isolated a district except by natural 
means, 
It may be of interest to mention that there are two plants of E. pur- 
purascens established on the southern side of the river Pahurehure, about 
5 and 7 miles southwest of Manurewa. 
Aer, LIII.—On the Sugar Values of Beet-roots grown in the Waikato District. 
By J. A. Ponp. 
[Read before the Auckland Institute, 5th September, 1881.] 
Dunine the session of 1880 a paper was read before this Institute entitled 
‘On the growth of Sugar-beet in New Zealand,” by Dr. S. M. Curl.* In 
this paper the writer very ably reviewed the subject and placed much 
valuable data before us, but when speaking of the values of sugar in the 
different varieties of beetroot examined by him, he claimed to have found 
as high as 17-5 per cent. This excessive amount, and the fact that Parlia- 
mentary Papers had been published giving analysis of New Zealand grown 
beets, showing much less favourable results, and the absence of any details 
of examination, led me to take up this subject with the view of practical 
operations should the experiments justify it. About this period also, I had 
interested myself in the matter of sugar-beet, owing to some superior seed 
having been brought from Hamburgh by Mr. G. S. Graham, and finding 
- it had been distributed amongst some of the Waikato : settlers for planting, 
tence ed 
Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. iii., art. xii. 
