Page:Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute - Volume 1 (2nd ed.).djvu/198

164 lighted either by the Maoris — where there are any Maoris — or by the colonist, to increase the extent of his pastures, the vegetation is soon reduced to the grasses, ferns, and those other families of plants which maintain their ground, though annually scorched.

By a process of this sort it is reasonable to suppose that the forest has been cleared away from the great breadth of the eastern and interior portions of the South Island. Groves of trees and even forests are still met with there; but they occur in localities which favour the above hypothesis. For where they now exist, the surface is either so broken and mountainous as to be worthless for occupation; or they are surrounded by swamps and running water; or, as in the southern portions of the country, the climate is so humid as to be unfavourable to the spreading of bush fires. Proceeding, for instance, from Cape Campbell southwards, the country is treeless until the ground begins to rise rapidly towards the flanks of the Kaikoura Mountains, the seaward aspect of which is clothed with forest. The limestone downs which skirt the coast to the south of the Kaikouras are entirely without timber. On the Canterbury Plains a few groves survive, surrounded by swamps. The ragged surface of Banks Peninsula is almost equally divided between forest. and open country, the former, however, chiefly occupying the hollows and moister portions. Proceeding still further south, for a distance of 200 miles, no timber to speak of is met with until we reach the promontory which contains the harbour of Otago, where a broken surface and the prevalence of rain have combined to preserve a noble breadth of forest. To the same cause the wooded ranges which border the coast between the Clutha and the Mataura appear to owe their existence, while the picturesque groves and masses of wood which are sown broadcast over the fertile plains of Southland still live, I should say, by virtue of the superior dampness of the soil and the corresponding humidity of the climate.

While the characteristic feature of the eastern half of the South Island of New Zealand is a grassy surface, now feeding several millions of sheep, that of its western mountains and sea-board is almost unbroken forest. Of the character of that forest at the level of the sea I have had but limited means of judging; but in the interior, and more especially at the higher levels, one genus of trees, the Fagus or birch of the colonists, occupies the ground to the exclusion of almost everything else, and impresses its peculiar physiognomy upon the landscape. In the Provinces of Nelson and Marlborough, with which I am more especially acquainted, I should say that of those portions clothed with wood, certainly nineteen-twentieths are covered with the different varieties of Fagus. It appears to be, as in the Fuegian Islands, the characteristic tree of the country. A fringe of land bordering the coasts,

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