Page:Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute - Volume 1 (2nd ed.).djvu/199

Rh and more particularly on the western side of the island, will doubtless show a very considerable variety of those trees which are met with in the warmer valleys of the Northern Island of New Zealand. On the plains and the alluvial soils there will be found an abundance of pines, and the flora will bear what may be called the ordinary New Zealand aspect. But no sooner do we leave the lower levels and rise a few hundred feet along the mountain sides, than we find ourselves in a peculiar forest, which occupies the ground as exclusively as the pine in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere, or the Eucalyptus in the Australian ranges. We are surrounded by evergreen beeches of various sorts; and nothing breaks the monotony of the forest save here and there the pale-green rimu, which mostly loves the hollows, or the cypress-like foliage and red stem of the hardy Thuja doniana, which grows on the summits of the ridges.

Blind Bay is enclosed between two lofty ranges, which, separated at their seaward extremities by a distance of some forty miles, gradually approximate, as we trace them southwards, until they coalesce in the elevated region of the Spencer Mountains. Upon the flanks of these, the principal rivers of the northern part of the South Island — the Wairau, the Buller, the Clarence, and the Dillon — take their rise. The eastern arm of these two ranges divides Blind Bay from the valley of the Wairau, widening as it advances northward, and enclosing between its broken and deeply indented fingers the estuaries of the Pelorus and Queen Charlotte Sound. The western arm, wider and loftier, sinks down to the north upon the shores of Massacre or Golden Bay, enclosing between its spurs the valleys of the Takaka and the Aorere Rivers. These two great ranges are clothed with an almost unbroken monotony of evergreen beeches. A botanist landing at the head of Queen Charlotte Sound, or where the Pelorus River enters the sea, would find a considerable variety of noble trees and many most beautiful evergreen shrubs. Where the ground was moistest, and indicated the existence of stagnant water, he would be surrounded by the grand mast-like stems of the White Pine (Podocarpus dacrydioides), generally green with moss, and often festooned with climbing parasites. On the drier ground he would find the Mai, or Red Pine (Podocarpus spicata), cleaner in the bark, less mast-like than the former, and carrying a greater head of foliage. On the still drier ground there would be the noble Totara (Podocarpus totara), ten feet, perhaps, in diameter, or even more, with its brown bark scaling off in long vertical strips, and its branches shooting athwart one another with the picturesqueness of the old English Oak. Mixed up with these he might find the Pukatea (Atherosperma novaezealandiae), with its bright green foliage, its pale grey bark, and deep parietal buttresses; the Tawa (Nesodaphne tawa), and the Kowhai (Edwardsia