EARTH AND SHINGLE SLIPS. 
7 
Fences are buried, silted up, or carried away for chains. Then, 
too, the earth slip is a fatal trap for sheep. Often for scores of 
yards down a hillside a bed of sticky and tenacious puddled 
clay will be for weeks a terror to the shepherds. On a run near 
here, fifty sheep were found bogged in one hole ; and during a 
bad season the loss of sheep in landslips cannot be set down as 
less than many thousands. 
Landslips occur in various forms. Sometimes the side of a 
hill is deeply gouged out and scattered in fan shape over the 
turf below ; sometimes only a narrow ribbon of clay mars the 
slope. Upon my own place it is interesting to watch another 
and important local cause for landslips, and to note, too, that 
what has been going forward for years before Europeans saw 
the island, is still in progress. Over great areas in the North 
Island, pumice grit has at one time or another been deposited, 
sometimes so thickly as to sterilize the land, in other parts only 
a few inches deep. About our district a very thin layer has 
been left. It is still to be found resting in every depression, 
however slight, upon the fertile marl. Above that pumice 
vein there is a more modern soil of leaf mould and clay dust, 
held together by a dense matting of roots. Rain water, filter- 
ing through the top soil and reaching the stiff marl, follows the 
pumice vein, and gradually the grit becomes the regular channel 
by which superfluous water escapes. 
The ne.xt step is the slow enlargement of this tiny water- 
course. The intermediate layer of pumice is gradually washed 
out and the top crust caves and falls in. It is then large enough 
to be avoided by shepherds as a dangerous “ under-runner.” 
The small semi-subterranean stream grows by every flood, the 
bottom guts out, the sides slip in, and out of what was once a 
gentle depression in the hills grows a steep ravine. 
Some idea of the quantity of soil that slips after a heavy 
flood may be gathered from the fact that upon one occasion no 
less than eighty-four slips were counted on less than three- 
quarters of a mile of hill slope. From that particular ridge I 
daresay fifteen per cent of the surface land had gone. Such a 
percentage is of course unusual, but it seems certain that the 
present tendency of the country to slip will continue, and that 
hereabouts, at least, our hills will never exhibit the unbroken 
stretches of green so characteristic of Britain. 
H. Guthrie-Smith. 
