seem to take the lead in particular localities. Thus, near Whangarei are found handsome coppices almost entirely composed of totara : on the broken ground round the Taranaki coast the white-leaved wharangi or pukapuka is chiefly prominent; the makomako, or settlers' “light-wood,” springs up over the clearings on the Mount Egmont slope, and on similar light soils elsewhere; on the uplands of the Nelson Province the beech encroaches on the cultivated lands; the terraces between the White Cliffs and the Ngatimaru country, in Taranaki, have a character of their own in the groves of waving korau fern-trees; while on the clay ranges in the vicinity of Mercury Bay the dark cone-shaped rewarewa grows with a regularity suggestive of artificial plantation. The same thing may be seen in the case of the fuchsia, the yellow kowhai, the ake, the towai, the tipau, the houhere, the whau, the ngaio, and a host of other minor forms, each of which seems to seek a place where it can flourish by itself, or where for a time at least it can form the principal feature.

The great exception to this rule is the tea-tree, of which there are two principal varieties—the manuka and the kahika-atoa. The tea-tree is the most interesting and important constituent of the “second growth”; it is practically a constant quantity, thriving equally on almost all soils and in nearly every situation—high and low, wet and dry, exposed or sheltered, it is all the same to this hardy and vigorous plant. Distributed, as the late Mr. T. Kirk states,^* over all districts from the Three Kings to Stewart Island, and even to the Snares, it is equally at home on the northern gumfields, the pumice plains of the interior, the swamps of the lower Waikato, amid the ocean spray of the storm-swept promontories, and the steam and sulphur vapours of the hot lakes district. Everywhere adapting itself to circumstances, on barren and exposed situations it flowers and seeds as a plant 2 in. high, while on rich alluvial bottoms it attains the dimensions of a handsome forest tree. The tea-tree is the connecting-link between the old and the new. Though freely burning green in its scrub state, and so helping to spread the fire into the surrounding bush, if it gets a chance it acts as the nursing mother of the new growth. On the clay lands of the north, wherever it manages to escape the fire for a few years, seedlings of the original trees invariably appear under its shelter, among which it is not uncommon to find healthy young kauris, tanekahas, and other forms never seen in the open; and in places where it has survived for a lengthened period the species becomes gradually more numerous, so that it requires an experienced eye to distinguish the new growth from the original bush.