tantalising, especially when, the New Zealand Robin was announced,
and I could only see a fat little ball of a bird, with a
yellowish-white breast. Animals there are none. No quadruped is
indigenous to New Zealand, except a rat; but then, on the other
hand, we are as free from snakes and all vermin as if St. Patrick
himself had lived here. Our host has turned several pheasants into
this forest, but they increase very slowly on account of the wekas.
However, the happiness of this morning was made complete by our
putting up two splendid rocketers.

We could only make our way by the paths which have been cut through
the Bush; a yard off the track it is impossible to stir for the
dense undergrowth. In the ravines and steep gullies formed by the
creeks grow masses of ferns of all sorts, spreading like large
shrubs, and contrasting by their light bright green with the black
stems of the birch-trees around them. There are a few pines in this
bush, but not many. I can give you no idea of the variety among the
shrubs: the koromika, like an Alpine rose, a compact ball of
foliage; the lance-wood, a tall, slender stem, straight as a line,
with a few long leaves at the top, turned downwards like the barb of
a spear, and looking exactly like a lance stuck into the ground; the
varieties of matapo, a beautiful shrub, each leaf a study, with its
delicate tracery of black veins on a yellow-green ground; the mappo,
the gohi, and many others, any of which would be the glory of an
English shrubbery: but they seem to require the deep shelter of
their native Bush, for they never flourish when transplanted. I
noticed the slender the large trees have of the ground, and it is
not at all surprising, after such a gale as we had three weeks ago,
to see many of the finest blown down in the clearings where the wind
could reach them. They do not seem to have any tap-root at all,