326 Transactions.— Botany. 
masses more or less regular, which still retain their plasticity, and as they 
gradually expand towards the circumference of the pit assume the appearance 
of decorative leather-work on a large scale, until becoming thinner they are 
gradually absorbed in the general mass. All degrees of consistency are to be 
found. No vegetation was observed on the walls of mud-springs, although 
the sides of simple boiling-springs, when not too violently agitated, were 
usually covered with a dense growth of fern or club-moss. At Whakarewa- 
rewa, on the south-east, are mud-volcanoes with elevated cones, which are 
constantly overflowing, and a series of intermittent geysers, fumaroles, and 
boiling springs, with terraces second only to those of Rotomahana, but the 
locality is seldom visited by tourists. 
As may be readily imagined from the foregoing sketch, the conditions 
under which vegetation exists are not favourable to the development of 
a luxuriant flora, and it is especially worthy of note that throughout the 
whole of the Taupo country the number of naturalized plants is dispro- 
portionately small as compared with other districts, even when all allowance 
is made for the slow progress of settlement ; it is, moreover, largely composed 
of species introduced by the missionaries for cultivation, mere garden escapes, 
as the stramonium, fennel, potato, strawberry, peach, cherry, tobacco, purslane, 
elder, horehound, sweet-briar, Lycium barbarum, ete., only a few of which are 
extensively distributed, the majority marking the sites of deserted cultivations. 
Near Te Arikiroa Bay a dense growth of Dracophyllum urvilleanum, 
Leptospermum scoparium, dwarf states of L. ericoides, etc., prevails to such 
an extent that it is difficult to force one’s way to many spots. Where the 
surface of the soil is more decomposed Gaultheria rupestris occurs sparingly ; 
about the boiling pool, Oruawhata, the scrub is much more luxuriant, and 
mixed with Coprosma lucida, etc. Datura stramonium is abundantly natu- 
ralized on the sulphur sand of the beach towards Ohinemutu, in some places 
growing with Lycium barbarum. On the low land at the back of Ohinemutu, 
much of the vegetation is stunted and diminutive. Amongst the manuka may 
be found two plants which here approach their northern limit—@naphalium 
filicaule and Lycopodium magellanicum. A Carmichelia, which in the absence 
of flowers I refer to C. juncea, Col., is occasionally met with. Lycopodium 
densum, L. laterale, Celmisia longifolia, Geum strictum, Potentilla anserina, 
Viola cunninghamii, Hydrocotyle nove-zealandie, Botrychium virginicum, 
Thelymitra pulchella, Alternanthera sessilis, Epilobium tetragonum, E. billar- 
dieri, E. alsinoides, Pimelea prostrata, with patches of Agrostis emula, Micro- 
læna stipoides, mixed with Cynodon dactylon, and other naturalized grasses, 
are the chief plants found in this vicinity. Cladium junceum, C. gunnii, and 
similar plants are abundant in the swamps and wet places; Eleocharis 
sphacelata and Sphagnum squarrosum occupied the whole of one large swamp. 
