62 Transactions. — -Miscettaneous. 



were at Laud ; and the remarks would arise simply from the difference in 

 the colour of the greens, — some being well-done, and some (hurriedly) half- 

 done ; some freshly gathered, and some stale ; the food having been quickly 

 cooked for them by two or three different persons ; the little baskets severally 

 brought in ; and, according to etiquette, none touched until all were in and 

 placed (as, indeed, with us). It was owing to this finely-developed faculty 

 that they knew so well, and from a distance, whether the annual summer 

 luxuries obtained from the female flowers of the kieJde plant, and from the 

 pollen of the raiqoo, were in season, and ready for collecting or not, — 

 through the slight change in the green of the tips of their leaves, — and so 

 saved themselves the labour of climbing, etc., purposely to ascertain. 



And here I may mention another little botanical incident, which indeed 

 not unfrequently occurred in our deep forest travelling. And to those 

 present who may have travelled through, or even only entered into, an 

 uncleared standing New Zealand forest in all its pristine glory, such a 

 relation may almost seem marvellous. In those umbrageous forests the 

 large trees are generally completely covered with all manner of plants 

 growing thickly on their trunks and branches, as freely, or even more so, 

 than if on the ground beneath. And there, sometimes, nestling among 

 them, yet far away, high up, would be a rare fern or L^jcopodiimi, or some 

 small epiphytical shrub, as Pittosporum cormfolium, or a Loranthns, or a 

 Viscum, or a still smaller plant of Peperomia ; and yet all those (and 

 many more) were severally made known to us below by their slight 

 difference in hue ; and so, through the quick and fine discernment of my 

 Maori friends, I sometimes gained some desirable specimens. The obtaining 

 of one such I would more particularly relate, as it is an excellent example 

 of what I have just mentioned, and one never to be forgotten by me. It 

 was my discovery (at the north, m 1841), of that rare pine, manoao 

 [Dacrydium colensoi, Hook.). I had heard of it from the old Maoris, but 

 none had seen one for several years, as they grew singly in the dense 

 forests, and the young Maoris did not even know it ! On one occasion, 

 however, when travelling through the trackless forest near the coast between 

 the Bay of Islands and Whangarei, we (or rather one elderly Maori then 

 with me) kept a look-out for it. Now this "pine," in its foliage, etc., 

 closely resembled some others of the class, — as the kaJdkatea, the n??m, 

 etc., — especially when at the distance of the top of a high tree, but the keen 

 eye of the old Maori detected it at last (though I, and the other younger 

 Maoris with me, could not make out any difference, owing to the distance). 

 And then, for my pocket-knife, he undertook the ugly job of climbing the 

 tree, and breaking off a branch for me. In this case it was more the 

 peculiar shade of green of the foliage, though distant, than anything else 



