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114 Dunedin, abundance of anise (Angelica gingidium). The plant is, however, such a favourite with cattle and sheep, that it is nearly exterminated in this neighbourhood. An interesting little patch of it occurs on a ledge of sandstone rock on the south road below Look-out Point. Cattle cannot get down to the ledge from above, and human beings can hardly reach it from below, and here survive a few plants of what used to be one of our commonest species. Along the same cliffs, near Musselburgh, but especially round on the sunny faces at the entrance of Anderson's Bay, grew patches of the little fern so characteristic of dry hill-sides, Cheilanthus sieberi.

The road across the Peninsula at Anderson's Bay is interesting on account of the glorious views it unfolds. Standing near the highest point from which one can see across to Dunedin, a magnificent panorama is presented, indeed, there are few finer points of vantage in the neighbourhood. A little further on and the whole coast-line opens out away down to the beach near Kaitangata. The road takes a sharp bend at the little cemetery a calm spot within sound of the unceasing break of old ocean, in which to rest after all the toil and tossing of life's restless sea. Down it goes to the edge of the sand hills, and crosses the lagoon at its mouth by an uninteresting bridge. The lagoon is not a pretty object now, it has rather a shabby stagnant look, and the cattle have trampled its banks and destroyed the scrub that used to grow about it. Yet it retains much of its interest to the naturalist. In the first place it is a surviving relic of the numerous little bays which formerly occurred in abundance along the east coast of Otago, but which by the upheaval of the coastline, are now transformed into lagoons and mud-flats. Along the stones at the mouth of this lagoon occur numbers of a curious crustacean, like large wood-lice in form, called Idotea lacustris. This is the only locality known for it in New Zealand, while the only other place where it has been found at all is at Port Henry, in the Straits of Magellan! There is a question of geographical distribution for the naturalist.

Let us walk round the meadow by the south side of the lagoon, and see what is to be found. The close sod is largely made up of water crowfoots—Ranunculus rivularis—with numerous aquatic sedges and grasses. Besides many common