CORRESPONDENCE. 269 
could be obtained. I purpose at an early date to lay before your 
readers the results of my observations, although confessedly 
imperfect. | | 
Stipa setacea. 
I referred Mr Buchanan’s S. fetriet to this species, and see 
not the slightest reason to alter my opinion. Mr. Petrie has 
kindly sent me specimens of both forms, one with a villous (not © 
setaceous) flowering glume which Mr. Buchanan admits to be 
S. setacea ;; the other differing only in the flowering glume being 
pubescent, and having two minute teeth at the apex. Mr. 
Buchanan will find that the flowering glume of S. setacea exhibits 
a great amount of variation in the degree of hairiness. 
Mr. Buchanan has misquoted what I have written upon this. 
He represents me as saying :—“ S. petviec of Buchanan’s Indigen- 
ous Grasses of New Zealand must be referred to this species, as 
not improbably it is merely naturalised in Otago, and has no 
claim to be considered indigenous.” If your readers will refer to 
“Trans. N.Z. Inst.,” vol. XIv., p. 386, they will see I have made 
_no such absurd statement, but referred S. fetvier to S. setacea, alto- 
gether independently of its indigenous or exotic origin, not 
because of it. In fact, the latter point is treated in a separate 
paragraph, so that it is difficult to offer any reasonable excuse 
for Mr Buchanan’s confusion of ideas. 
With regard to its nativity, I may state that Mr. Petrie 
recently informed me he considered it to be an introduced plant. 
I fail altogether to see the slightest force in Mr. Buchanan’s 
remark with regard to S. micrantha, as the conditions under which 
the two plants are found are not parallel. 
Poa foliosa, var. a.—Festuca scoparia. 
Here again Mr. Buchanan has been guilty of misquotation. 
Professing to quote from my short note in p. 348, Trans. xIv., he 
writes :—“ P. foliosa, the typical form recorded by Buchanan in his 
‘ Hand-book of the N.Z. Grasses, from the Snares and Chatham 
Islands, in the latter incorrectly, . scoparia which is omitted from 
his list of Chatham Island plants, having been mistaken for it.” 
Your readers will scarcely believe without referring to the 
original, that the words in italics are inserted by Mr. Buchanan 
himself. He proceeds to call thisa “ mysterious statement,” and 
asks how then could it (Poa foliosa) have been mistaken for 
fF’. scoparia? ‘The mystery is entirely of his own making, for my 
assertion was exactly the reverse. The Festuca was mistaken for 
the Poa, which has not been found in the Chatham Islands. Mr. 
Buchanan himself showed me in the collection of Chatham 
Island plants in the Colonial Museum what he called Poa foliosa, 
but which was Festuca scoparia. The former is mentioned in his 
list of Chatham Island plants, while the latter is omitted, and 
although I have examined collections of Chatham Island plants 
made by Captain Gilbert Mair, Archdeacon W. H. Williams, 
Mr. H. T. Travers, and others, I have seen no specimens of the 
Poa, while the Festuca is found in nearly all. There is not the 
