Teavees. — Qomparlson of the Floras of JSfdson and Canierhury. Vl*7 



(twenty-five feet high and twenty inches in diameter) in the northern parts 

 o£ Nelson, is reduced almost to a shrub, growing only in warm, sheltered 

 spots on Banks Peninsula. Arallacece, PittosporecB, and Ruhiacece are 

 little represented as compared with the numbers of species and varieties 

 in the Nelson district. Many Veronicas usually found at considerable 

 elevations in the latter, are frequent in the lower grounds of Canterbury. 

 The number of composite plants of the same species is apparently more 

 equal, and little if any difference is to be found in a large proportion of 

 MyrtacecB, which are common to both districts. The Areca sapida grows in 

 some parts of Banks Peninsula, but by no means in the numbers or so 

 luxuriantly as in the palm groves of "Wakapuaka or Massacre Bay. Of 

 the tree-ferns, Cyatliea medidlaris is not found there, and I was particularly 

 struck by the absence of all those beautiful species of Trichomanes and 

 Symenophyllum which abound in and adorn the warm, sheltered woods of 

 the Nelson valleys. 



In these remarks I have confined myself to the forest vegetation of the 

 eastern parts of the two districts, and indeed it is chiefly in these localities 

 that we detect any very marked differences in that portion of the two floras. 

 As before observed, the western sides of the mountain chains in each dis- 

 trict are covered with dense forest, and except that in Canterbury the line 

 of the Fagus does not reach a greater altitude than about 4,200 feet, 

 whilst in Nelson it attains, if it does not even exceed, 5,000, the only 

 difference I observed in the forest as we proceed to the south is, that it 

 becomes more homogeneous in character, various species of Fagus, with 

 occasional but rare patches of Metrosideros and Dacrydium cupressinum, 

 there forming the greater bulk of the whole. A line of a species of 

 DracopJiyllum (the specific name of which is unknown to me) stretches 

 from Mount Arthur spur on the western side of Blind Bay, down to the 

 Teremakau saddle in the Canterbury district, the trees, however, gradually 

 diminishing in size to the southward, notwithstanding a gradual diminution 

 in the altitude at which they grow. 



It is found, too, that except in very favourable localities the size and 

 durability, in its economical applications, of the Fagus timber is far less in 

 the Canterbury district than in the northern parts of Nelson. 



On the whole, however, it may be said that, with the exception of such 

 variations as are likely to be due indirectly to the influences of climate, the 

 great forests on the western side of the two districts present very little 

 difference in composition or other character. 



There is also a specific identity in the principal grasses and in many 

 other of the herbaceous plants found in the pastoral lands of both districts, 

 considered in regard to horizontal or latitudinal distribution, though in 

 23 



