THE AGE OE NEW ZEALAND. 
433 
dispersed throughout the southern hemisphere, and bear a 
strong resemblance to those of the carboniferous age. 
In addition to these are the coniferous trees, which also 
present a striking likeness to those found in the coal mea- 
sures, their leaves having a primitive type in being parallel 
veined. The Dammara are now only found in a line extending 
from Borneo to New Zealand j about six kinds are known, 
including the Damara Orientcilis , or pitch pine of Amboyna, 
and the Damara Australis , or Kauri, which furnishes the 
finest spars for our navy ; both of these pines are worthy of 
notice on account of the immense quantity of valuable resin 
they produce, some lumps of Kauri gum, as it is called, have 
been found, more than a hundred pounds in weight. The 
various semi-fossil kinds of resin met with in the southern 
lands are all extremely interesting, as the gum copal in 
South Africa, in the Philippines and Indian Isles, and two 
kinds in New Zealand, which in hardness and beauty exceed 
that of the Kauri, more closely resembling amber, which may 
be considered as belonging to the carboniferous epoch of 
Europe.* 
The locality of the Damara is generally in deep valleys 
with a pipe clay soil, which renders the ground retentive of 
moisture, and therefore always humid ; the quantity of matter 
formed round the stem of a Kauri by the annual shedding of 
its leaves and bark is so great, as frequently to become a 
mound six or eight feet high, which makes the tree appear to 
rise from the apex of a pyramid, thus showing how materially 
such debris have aided in forming the vegetable deposits of 
the coal age ; the Kauri resin is found throughout the range 
of the New Zealand coal fields, in the Waikato coal it is seen 
in small nodules, highly colored and transparent, but in that 
of Massacre Bay, in large lumps, chiefly opaque and filled 
with iron pyrites. 
The net- work character of the roots of New Zealand trees, 
which run along the ground and do not penetrate any depth, 
seldom having tap roots, is also a point of resemblance to the 
most ancient forests. 
* These specimens I have picked up on the New Zealand shores 
