Passiflora tetrandra.

On allotment 86, East Waiuku, the property of Mr. Marshall, three years ago, I was passing a specimen of this climber so singular that I stopped to sketch and measure it.

Attached to a branch of a small taua tree, about 18 inches diameter at its butt, and at a height which I guessed to be 35 feet, depended a vine which reached the ground, and had a diameter of 3½ inches. On the ground, like a rope cable, was spread a coil and a half of the plant. The coil was circular and its diameter 12 feet. By multiplying the diameter by 31/7, the length of the plant was 56 feet 6 inches lying on the ground, while the distance from the ground to the branch of attachment was not more than 35 feet; in other words, nearly two-thirds of the round stem of the vine were on the ground.

How came the plant to grow in this singular shape? Probably the vine grew up the stem of the taua, formed a firm attachment to the branch from which it still hangs, the branch bore it out into the air, having little prehensile power its weight caused it to leave the stem by which it had climbed. Borne further out horizontally by the growth of the branch, but not higher, the growth of the stem of the vine, as formed by the crown of leaves above,