Page:Through South Westland.djvu/19

Rh Clematis indivisa is very conspicuous in late summer on the West—one of the most beautiful of all New Zealand flowers.

When we consider that of 1,400 flowering plants of New Zealand, three-quarters are found nowhere else, and that the remainder belong to families scattered over Australia, Malaya, Melanesia, and South America, it will be seen how wide is the field. Constantly one is asking the question: “What does it belong to?” And as often as not no one knows. Yet the charm of being brought face to face with the unknown forest world is very great.

Except in a few instances, I have taken my chapter headings from poems of that band of singers that has been growing up across the seas—singers whose music is often as sweet and haunting as that of the birds in their forests.

My grateful thanks are due to Mr. Tomlinson of Christchurch, New Zealand, for his kindness in allowing me the use of his beautiful photographs of the Haast Track, and to the New Zealand Government Tourist Department for their courtesy in allowing one of the Franz Josef to be reproduced; to the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, N.Z., and the Curator, Mr. Edgar Waite, for that of the Kiwi, and to Rev. H. E. Newton, for another of the Franz Josef glacier. And here I would like to offer grateful thanks to the Hon. W. Pember Reeves, Mr. W. Warde Fowler, Sir Samuel Dill, the Rev. H. E. Newton, and Miss