Page:Notes on New Zealand (1892).pdf/54

44 composed of plains originally covered with native tussock grass, but now nearly all under cultivation. This is the only part of the island which is not well watered by nature; but the wants of nature have been supplied here, as elsewhere, by man, and water races have been taken all over the plains. A curious circumstance in connection with the rivers which are to be found in Canterbury deserves to be mentioned — they are all above the level of the plains.

The bush of the South Island, generally speaking, does not comprise such a variety of trees as that of the North Island,