KOTIWHENU lll 
had managed to make a settlement. With one 
exception, these weeds had reached the island as 
stowaways; the potato excepted, none had been 
purposely imported. Some of the adventurers 
had been hidden in sacking or plastered in the soil 
glued into the eyes of potatoes, or on men’s boots 
or clothes, or in the planking imported for the 
little huts, or ridden loose in the dust of old ragged 
bags. Aliens growing on Kotiwhenu at the date 
of our visit were—some of them are represented 
by a single plant—cock’s-foot, Yorkshire fog, poa 
pratensis, sweet vernal, rye-grass, tall fescue, white 
clover, plantain, vicia sativa, capeweed, sorrel, 
dock, mouse-ear-chickweed, pimpernel, sowthistle 
—very rank and luxurious—wall speedwell, poly- 
gonum aviculare, shepherd’s-purse, and pearlwort : 
these plants had got thus far at any rate on their 
march to the South Pole. The potato had man- 
aged to propagate itself from peelings and tubers 
thrown aside. We found it growing vigorously 
on the rich, oil-saturated, highly manured peat in 
the immediate neighbourhood of the huts, tuber- 
ing freely almost on the surface. 
Kotiwhenu is wholly surrounded by cliffs. In 
shape it is roughly hog-back, the highest point 
reaching perhaps a couple of hundred feet. Almost 
everywhere the surface is covered by peat. N early 
half the total area is bare of undergrowth of any 
kind, and exposes a surface of bird-worn brown, 
