236 Essays. 



sideros tomentosct) pendant from tlie cliffs or perched on some rocky headland ; 

 and perhaps in some forest not far off the stately kauri pine {Dammara 

 amtralis) uprearing its lofty head far above all its compeers ; but these 

 vegetable characteristics will not be found south of the East Cape. 



4. The general appearance of New Zealand vegetation (North Island) is 

 not on the whole of a pleasing character. Brown fern-clad plains, and low 

 hills sometimes of tolerably regular outline, but oftener of all rugged shapes 

 and sizes, and dark-green almost gloomy-looking forests — here extending for 

 many miles, and there in belts or patches-^yield not an agreeable prospect. 

 But in summer — vv'hen the sombre fern is bedecked with the neat flowering 

 mantle of its neighbour, the myriad blooming manuka {Leptospermum 

 scoparium) diffusing also its aromatic smell with every breeze ; and the 

 smaller and much more variegated woods, found nestling in deep glens and 

 fringing the watercourses, exhibit their " ever-changing ever-new " forms 

 and summer colours in ever-varying lights and shades — then the New Zea- 

 land vegetation appears greatly to advantage. 



5. Not many of our larger timber trees are either handsome or graceful 

 in foliage and branching when full grown, although several are both while 

 young: — e.g. the drooping branched rimu {I)acrydium cupressinum) , the 

 graceful fern-plumaged kawaka {Thuja doniana^), the handsome celery- 

 leaved tanekaha {PhyUodadus trichomanoides) , the elegant poplar-like rewa- 

 rewa {Kniglitia excelsd), the soft full-foliaged titoki {Aleetryon excelsi(/ni) , 

 the ornate tawhai (Fagiis onenziesii) , and in high alluvial soils the spreading 

 tawhairaunui {Fagus fiosca) . Yet what may be absent of beauty and grace 

 is more than supplied in size and utility. The huge bulk of some of the 

 vegetable giants of the New Zealand forests, and the clean symmetrical 

 trunks of others towering aloft in silent grandeur, can never fail to strike 

 the beholder with astonishment and awe, a feeling sense of his own littleness 

 and span-like existence, of admiration at " the (living) high embowered 

 roof, with antique pillars massy proof, — casting a dim religious light," — 

 ending perchance in lofty thoughts tending towards immortality — is sure 

 in such umbrageous retreats to steal over him. 



6. Of our shrubs and smaller timber trees, several are of strikingly 

 beaiitiful growth, or blossom, or foliage ; and are often seen to advantage 

 when standing on some clear glade, or on the outskirts of a forest : — e.g. 

 the houhere {Holeria popidnea)-\- and its varieties, the horopito {Brimys 



* Libocedrus doniana, Hook, f. — Ed. 



t Hoheria populnea : the botanist Allan Cunningham (who first visited this North 

 Island of New Zealand in 1826, and who created this genus), was an accurate and enthu- 

 siastic observer of nature ; fie thus characteristically and truly notices the beauty of this 

 tree, in drawing up its generic character (pubhshed in 1836),— " Arbuscula, spectabihs, 

 sempervirens et maxime ornata in sylvis naturalibus lis." — Ann. Nat. HisL, vol. iii. p. 319. 



