16S Essai/s. 



company with that gentleman, whose friendship it was my privilege to 

 enjoy during several j^earSj I ascended several of the mountain ranges of the 

 Wairau and Upper Awatere in search of alpine novelties. It was impos- 

 sible to have a pleasanter companion, and no one could be more enthusiastic 

 in the cultivation of natural science, or bring to the task a mind better 

 stored with all the requisite knowledge. Seated round the camp fire at 

 night, his extensive and minute acquaintance with a wide range of subjects, 

 his knowledge of art and science, and his experience, both of men and 

 things, derived from enlightened observation in many countries, combined, 

 with a cheerful temper, a large fund of anecdote, and a genial philosophy, to 

 render his conversation most entertaining and instructive. While he lived 

 he was one of the chief contributors to our knowledge of the botany of the 

 country. "What he did in this way he accomplished chiefly during intervals 

 of leisure snatched from the duties of a responsible ofiice. With his time 

 entirely at his disposal, as it latterly was, and the whole energies of his 

 mind given to the task, a great deal more might have been looked for from 

 his researches ; and an irreparable calamity befell the cause of science in 

 this colony when Dr. Sinclair, then engaged in exploring the botany of the 

 central portions of this island, lost his life in the Eangitata River. 



Regarded as a whole, I should say that the vegetation of the South 

 Island was less luxuriant than that of the jN^orth. In the former, we miss 

 altogether some of the most handsome and striking plants which are to be 

 met with in the latter, more particularly in its northern portions. That 

 species of Mefrosideros, for instance, called by the natives Pohutukawa, so 

 beautiful an object in the middle of summer, bending over the salt waters 

 of some sheltered harbour, and gorgeous with its bundles of crimson fila- 

 ments, is not to be met with in the South. The noble Kauri, one of the 

 stateliest and commercially the most valuable of the New Zealand forest 

 trees, is not found to the south of Mercury Bay. The Puriri {Vitex littora- 

 lis), wider in its range, and abundant about Taranaki, I have never met with 

 on the south side of Cook Strait. Charmed with its rich green foliage, 

 and the beauty alike of its pink blossom and cherry-like fruit, I have carried 

 with me young plants, and endeavoured to naturalize it in my shrubberies at 

 Nelson, but could not succeed, for the frosts of our winter nights proved 

 fatal to its delicate organization. Another familiar form which one misses 

 in the south is the shrubby Tomaderris, which clothes the ground so abun- 

 dantly in the neighbourhood of Auckland and elsewhere. But if the 

 South Island be less abundantly furnished with trees and shrubs than the 

 North, it possesses, in its wide extent of pasture, and in the abundance of 

 grasses which clothe its eastern plains, and the downs and hilly slopes of its 

 interior, a more than ample compensation ; for these pastures are a source 



