184 
NATURE NOTES. 
sweet with the scent of blossoming gorse, and when the dry wind 
blows from the warm north-west, the germander speedwell’s blue 
flowers expand. 
During our coldest months — May, June and July — there is a 
marked growth in the ryegrass, and a lesser in the cocksfoot and 
Poa pratensis. In a wet season I have seen two and even three 
crops of strawberries, and in a warm damp year the earlier 
varieties of apple fruit twice. Thirty years ago nearly the whole 
of Hawkes Bay was densely clad in fern, almost precisely similar 
to the bracken of Scotland, each year’s crop, however, not wither- 
ing away as at home, but remaining verdant for two or three 
seasons. As this growth was burnt off and eaten down by stock, 
grass seed was sown, and no doubt with it many British weeds 
have been imported. 
The most conspicuous and beautiful of these introductions is 
the thistle — “ Scotsman,” as it is termed in the colonies. It is to 
be found everywhere, from a huge bush five feet high, to a feeble 
plant of a foot with half a-dozen blooms. I have even seen it 
blossoming forty feet in air — flourishing in the fork of a rotting 
forest tree. It blocks, with us, the summer sheep tracks, and it 
is curious to watch horses plucking off the prickly purple heads 
w'ith their bared teeth, and then gingerly working the delicate 
morsels back to their grinders. 1 have seen the down lying in 
loose packed drifts a foot in depth, and especially on newly 
cleared forest lands. All day long, under a deep blue sky, 
over the huge felled logs, and in among the skeleton standing 
trees, hour after hour, the thistle down slowly sails. By the 
same means dandelion, sowthistle, and hawkweed have spread 
everywhere. I have noticed how much faster with us such 
plants spread from north to south than from south to north. 
The first specimen of nipplewort I ever saw on the run ap- 
peared on its northern extremity, and about the same time I 
noticed a native groundsel on the south-east end. This latter 
was a very free seeder, yet the nipplewort, three years later, was 
here and there to be found in all parts, whereas the groundsel 
was still within a few hundred acres of its original habitat. 
Our summer winds blow from the dry hot north and north- 
w'est, whereas a breeze from the south is rare, and is almost 
invariably accompanied by rain, which of course drowns and 
clogs all feathery seeds. This very simple explanation accounts 
for the rapid spread of the one and the almost stationary position 
of the other. 
Imported plants, like imported birds, are first seen singly, and 
then three or four years later in thousands. A single plant of “ Fat 
Hen ” will be seen in a ploughed field, and three years later this 
noxious weed will be choking all other growth. Now that the 
fern and bush are gone, many of the native weeds also give 
trouble. 
In the wide shingly river beds of the South Island the gorse 
has spread to such an extent as to seriously threaten to alter the 
