Page:Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute - Volume 1 (2nd ed.).djvu/211

Rh (twenty-five feet high and twenty inches in diameter) in the northern parts of Nelson, is reduced almost to a shrub, growing only in warm, sheltered spots on Banks Peninsula. Araliaceae, Pittosporeae, and Rubiaceae are little represented as compared with the numbers of species and varieties in the Nelson district. Many Veronicas usually found at considerable elevations in the latter, are frequent in the lower grounds of Canterbury. The number of composite plants of the same species is apparently more equal, and little if any difference is to be found in a large proportion of Myrtaceae, which are common to both districts. The Areca sapida grows in some parts of Banks Peninsula, but by no means in the numbers or so luxuriantly as in the palm groves of Wakapuaka or Massacre Bay. Of the tree-ferns, Cyathea medullaris is not found there, and I was particularly struck by the absence of all those beautiful species of Trichomanes and Hymenophyllum which abound in and adorn the warm, sheltered woods of the Nelson valleys.

In these remarks I have confined myself to the forest vegetation of the eastern parts of the two districts, and indeed it is chiefly in these localities that we detect any very marked differences in that portion of the two floras. As before observed, the western sides of the mountain chains in each district are covered with dense forest, and except that in Canterbury the line of the Fagus does not reach a greater altitude than about 4,200 feet, whilst in Nelson it attains, if it does not even exceed, 5,000, the only difference I observed in the forest as we proceed to the south is, that it becomes more homogeneous in character, various species of Fagus, with occasional but rare patches of Metrosideros and Dacrydium cupressinum, there forming the greater bulk of the whole. A line of a species of Dracophyllum (the specific name of which is unknown to me) stretches from Mount Arthur spur on the western side of Blind Bay, down to the Teremakau saddle in the Canterbury district, the trees, however, gradually diminishing in size to the southward, notwithstanding a gradual diminution in the altitude at which they grow.

It is found, too, that except in very favourable localities the size and durability, in its economical applications, of the Fagus timber is far less in the Canterbury district than in the northern parts of Nelson.

On the whole, however, it may be said that, with the exception of such variations as are likely to be due indirectly to the influences of climate, the great forests on the western side of the two districts present very little difference in composition or other character.

There is also a specific identity in the principal grasses and in many other of the herbaceous plants found in the pastoral lands of both districts, considered in regard to horizontal or latitudinal distribution, though in

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