Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/397

Rh and luxuriant in the world, but to lovers of autumn tints they have one detracting feature. They are everywhere and always green. In them is every shade of green, all suggestive of eternal spring. A few trees shed tinted leaves in winter, but the nearest approach to autumn colors which the average traveler sees is the tints of sword ferns on cliff faces and by mountain roads. But when the forests are in flower the vast expanses of green are brightened with scarlet, crimson, pink, yellow, and white. Then is seen the red of the pohutukawa, the rata, the puriri, and the mistletoe; the red and yellow of the kowhai, the creamy blossoms of the hinau, and the white of the ribbonwood and clematis.

Generally speaking. New Zealand has two classes of forest, mixed bush and beech. The mixed bush is wide-spread in both islands; the beech is found chiefly in the South Island. The first contains such a great variety of plants that as many as forty or fifty species of trees and shrubs have been found on one acre. In both classes of forest the average height of trees is from sixty to eighty feet; the maximum height is one hundred and fifty feet, in the mixed bush.

It is doubtful if forests more beautiful than the palm and fern-graced mixed bush can be found anywhere. In it trees and undergrowth thrive as in a tropical jungle. Beneath the masses of the small-leaved foliage of the larger trees is a dense growth of young trees struggling to force their way up to the sunlight. Under them all is a fairy carpet of delicate moss and moss ferns. In this