lana, Tralia costellaris, Chione stutchburyi, and Mesodesma novœ-zelandiœ. The Crustacea are: Crabs, shrimps, and sandhoppers. These sea and salt-marsh shells are being driven gradually seaward year by year by the encroaching flood deposits. Tralia costellaris, a curious little member of the family Auriculidœ, was, before 1897, very plentiful in the salt-weed on the harbour side of the Wharerangi Road. But that flood practically exterminated it from this area; it is now very scarce, and is only found on the highest banks of the sea-creeks that run up to the road. It is plentiful enough still at the Petane end of the harbour, where I have found it climbing high on the rush-bushes after rain, reminding one that some tropical species of this family have taken to an inland and forest life as true land-shells. The flora of the seaward side of this road is interesting only from its contrast to the opposite side. Once past the shooting-butts point, the tide swirls up almost to the roadway, leaving naked on its retreat mats of sea-grass (Zostera); then these harbour shallows shrink to evernarrowing channels, which lose themselves towards the Wharerangi turn-off in silt-flats given over solely to Salicornia and Triglochin. On the landward, or rather the swamp, side there is much more variety. We get here the typical sea-marsh flora, flourishing on the neck of comparatively dry land that divides the road from a large lagoon. The pioneers of the silt-flats nearer town, Salicornia and Triglochin, are here in abundance, with wild celery (Apium australe), Samolus littoralis, Selliera radicans, and Mimulus repens. The weed that chokes the channel is a brackish-water plant, Ruppia maritima. Apium australe is the wild celery, so common alike on our coastal cliffs and sea-marshes. It is said that Cook's seamen used this plant as an antidote to scurvy. Samolus littoralis is of interest from being the one and only representative of the primrose family native to New Zealand. Its pale-pink flowers, which it bears in great profusion, relieves the somewhat sombre colouring of this roadside during the early months of summer. Mimulus repens, a curious little creeping ally of the snapdragon, is only to be seen at one place by the roadside, and that nearly opposite the Wharerangi turn-off; but it is very plentiful in other parts of the swamp, notably round the wetter portions of the paddocks of the North British Freezing-works. The work of the flood of 1897 has been given as an example of natural reclamation. Turning to the artificial, it is interesting to watch the inroads made by man by means of draining