i86 
NATURE NOTES. 
weeds are to be found in our fields and gardens ; and among 
grasses, Poa annua, ratstail, and sweet vernal, though never con- 
sciously sown, are spreading fast, where soil and climate suit. 
After a fire has passed over felled bushland, I have noticed 
oats, rape, turnips and pumpkins flourishing luxuriantly ; and 
this in country where there are two or three small gardens 
in sixty or seventy thousand acres, and where there is almost 
no agriculture. 
It is remarkable, too, how some weeds have not made their 
appearance, such as ragweed, the marsh thistle, and the wild 
scarlet poppy of cornfields. Daisies, dog violets, primroses, 
cowslips, harebells, and blue hyacinths — the best known and 
loved of home flowers — have been planted in the gardens. 
In all these ways is the flora of Britain establishing itself in 
New Zealand. I daresay it has done so in other of our colonial 
possessions too, for the spread of the British race ensures the 
spread of the British wild flowers. 
H. Guthrie Smith. 
Tuiira Lake, Hawhes Bay, 
New Zealand. 
A SUGGESTION. 
T seems to me that the members of the Selborne Society 
have advantages offered them by this Magazine which 
are not sufficiently appreciated — I mean the assist- 
ance it might be to us in our study of natural history, 
to have more communication with each other through its pages. 
We might form an organised plan for amateur observations 
Avhich, though less valuable than those of scientific men, are yet 
not without a certain value of their own even to science, and 
most certainly would add to our own interest and pleasure in 
life, and to our knowledge of natural history. The observations 
I would suggest may seem to be of a very simple nature, but 
are, perhaps, none the less valuable on that account. 
if we stop to think, we may perhaps be surprised to find how 
little we actually know practically of the Avays of the Avild crea- 
tures liA'ing around us. For example, I remember once seeing 
a SAA'alloAV-tail butterfly flitting, as I thought, in a A’ague aimless 
manner in the garden ; happening to Avatch it more closely, I Avas 
surprised to see that its course AA'as by no means so indeflnite as 
1 had supposed. It fleAv constantly round and round in a large 
circle, and so it appeared to pass its time for one or tAvo days. 
Why it selected this special round I do not knoAv, but it certainly 
opened my mind to the idea that eA'en a butterfly may liaA^e more 
method in its proceedings than I had eA-er before supposed 
possible. A fact like this should haA'e led me to folloAv up more 
