The Climate of Stewart Island.

In his Report on the Botany of Stewart Island, Dr. L. Cockayne discusses the climate of Stewart Island and its influence on the vegetation, hence briefest mention is here necessary.

The climate of the north and east is on the whole milder, sunnier, and less windy than that of the west, centre, and south, where it is of subantarctic type with frequent gales, cloudy skies, and heavy rainfall doubtless reaching 150 in. per annum on occasions,

though no statistics are available. Summer temperatures rarely exceed 75° Fah., while in winter, frosts, even on the central tableland, probably exceed 15° only on rare occasions.

In the area covered by the present investigation, frosts are rare save at the higher altitudes, and snow seldom falls save on Mount Anglem and on the Thomson Range. The rainfall near Oban seldom exceeds 70 in. per annum and is frequently much less, but the number of rainy days is considerable (average = 227 3 per annum) and drought is unknown. Winds, though fairly constant, are rarely of gale force save at high levels. Mists shroud the mountain tops very frequently and often for days at a time. The shade intensity in the forest interior is very considerable even on sunny days.

The mildness of the climate of the north and east is reflected in the sub-tropical “rimu-kamahi” rain-forest with its wealth of lianes, tree-ferns, foliaceous lichens, and bryophytes. This is in sharp contrast to the “yellow pine” forests, manuka belts, and extensive moorlands that characterize the centre, south, and west, where ferns are fewer, epiphytic cryptogams more conspicuous, and hepatics more numerous than mosses, though both tend to form large, spongy cushions both on the ground and on the stems and trunks of shrubs and trees.