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tithe he takes of the farmer's crop, takes fifty tithes of those insect pests which injure the farmer's crop; and there are worse things in the world than cold squab-pie. Wood-pigeons would find New Zealand a paradise; and breeding with the native bird, would probably tempt this forest recluse to sun his beauty more in the open country, where men could see and shoot him.

Indeed, there can be no reason why emigrant enthusiasts in Birds should not introduce all their feathered favourites. Jay, magpie, and starling, thrush, blackbird, and goldfinch, bullfinch, sparrow, and linnet, are all easily procured; would all bear the voyage; would all thrive and multiply in New Zealand; would all form pleasant surroundings and associations; and would all be useful as well as ornamental.

Thoroughly adapted for all our common birds and for small game, New Zealand, if possible, is even better adapted for our large game. Red, roe, and fallow deer, once introduced into feeding grounds and noble coverts like Mount Egmont's ranges and the "Black Forest" territory, described in the article on Nelson, would never be exterminated-not even if hunted, war-to-the-knife, by the Red Indians led by Scrope St. John or Cumming.

A serious proposal for the introduction of game into New Zealand may be derided by some as a speculation bordering on the aesthetics of emigration. But, in truth, the introduction of game into a country like New Zealand might well be attended with social and even pecuniary benefits. We don't go to New Zealand, as we do to Victoria, with pick and pan, to dig for dear-won nuggets, to gulp gallons of rum, and then, rich or ragged, to hurry home. We go to the Britain of the South to create an estate-to raise a home wherein to anchor fast and plant our household gods; and all we do to make this home a glad and happy home tends to increase both our profits and our pleasures. No man can better deserve, no man can better afford, a day's pastime than a New Zealand colonist. His bow,

The fallow deer could unquestionably be introduced; while from information gained this season in Aberdeenshire from Lord Panmure's keepers, I think that with care and management young half-tamed, handraised red deer would make the voyage.

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even, must sometimes be unbent; and surely 'tis better far that he should nerve himself in rural sports, "chasing the red deer and following the roe," than that he should relax himself in city dissipations and the laps of ballet girls.

Some day, too, New Zealand may have to "set her squadrons in the tented field," say to chastise Victoria, or to beat off the French she may need good soldiers-good soldiers must be good shots-good shots are made by good shooting and America has raw materials for the finest soldiers in the world mainly because her abundance of game makes every tenth man a crack rifle shot.

Might we not reasonably say, then, that families of the estate-creating capitalist order, who may contemplate planting new homes in our infant Britain of the South, would deserve well of the Land of their adoption if each would give a few pounds and a few hours to the gradual work of stocking our fields and forests with the common birds and the game of the British Isles ?

THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

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CHAPTER VI.

VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

NEW ZEALAND is the land of greenwood. Vegetation runs riot. The teeming growth, perpetual verdure, and vigorous freshness of her forests, have been the admiration of every visitor since the days of Cook. Of plants, from humble shrub and creeping daisy up to that king of trees, the noble Kauri, there are nearly 650 distinct species; and of these there are scarcely twenty which bear even a general resemblance to any of our English plants.

The four great characteristic differences between the Flora of New Zealand and that of any European country are these::1, that in New Zealand every plant is evergreen ;* 2, the existence in New Zealand of a far smaller proportion of annuals and flower-bearing plants; 3, the existence of a much larger proportion of trees and shrubs, and of tree-creeping parasitical plants; 4, the existence of numerous plants of the beautiful fern and palm-tree family.

The mode of growth too, the general appearance of a New Zealand forest, is different from anything in the old world. Thousands of tall columnar trees of fifty different species, one to two hundred feet high, struggle up through a wilderness of underwood-their leafy heads so loaded with tufts of rushy

The Fuchsia-tree (Fuchsia excorticata) is the only exception. The trees shed their leaves and renew them, as one leaf drops off, another comes. But, as before observed, there is no autumnal fall, no universal spring re-clothing; and though the foliage is the brightest and most blossom-chequered in spring, it appears almost equally thick and luxuriant at all seasons. The timber-trees have intertwined surface roots, not taproots; and never exhibit a lateral growth, like our larch and firs. They display straight, columnar, branchless, stems; surmounted by circular or conical heads of heavy boughs and leafy branches.

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parasites that the true foliage is almost lost in the rank vegetation of the alien polypiæ; while innumerable creepers, from the rope-like supple-jack up to that vegetable boa-constrictor, the gigantic Rata, coil round every stem, run up every limb, glide from head to head, and intwine the topmost branches of a dozen trees in fifty Gordian knots. The Underwood consists of these creepers and of an equally dense growth of young saplings, mixed with forest shrubs, such as the delicate lady's hair, the Kopakopa, an elegant plumy fern, the Nikau and many others. Such, too, is the closeness of the growth, such the luxuriance of the vegetation in a New Zealand forest, that sun and air scarce can penetrate, glimpses only of the sky are caught through the leafy canopy above, and at high noonday in the fields it is always green twilight in the woods. If this underwood thicket contained any prickly plants like briars and brambles, or the African Wait-a-bit thorn, the New Zealand forest, or "Bush," as we call it, would be a jungle physically impenetrable; and even as it is it presents so many obstacles to free movement that no one but a native or a bush sawyer, experienced in supple-jack snares and root-traps, would burst and scramble through it at a greater rate of progress than a mile an hour at most.

In England there are not, I think, 40 varieties of indigenous trees in New Zealand, including shrubs over twenty feet high, there are 120; and of these, probably half, are trees attaining a size large enough to entitle them to rank as "Timber Trees."

The smaller trees and tree-shrubs (light bush), growing about the edges of the great forests, or clothing the dells and valleys of the open country, are so numerous that the bare enumeration of them here would require more space than I can devote to the whole Vegetable Kingdom. Among the commonest, we find three varieties of that forest Houri, the Ferntree, fifty feet high with coronals of palmy leaves fluttering in the breeze like forest fans; the Nikau, more rare but less beautiful than the fern-tree; the Fuchsia, thirty feet high; the fruity Poroporo, the sweet-scented Manuka, the tree-myrtle and fragrant Veronica, the Ngaio, the elegant Titoki, and the laurellike Karaka with its glossy foliage and clusters of golden fruit-

WILD SHRUBS, FLOWERS, AND FRUITS.

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the last the only tree which the Maori Æneas brought with him in his migration from the sunny shores of Hawaii.*

In addition to the number of valuable trees and plants indigenous to New Zealand, her vegetable kingdom has received great extension by the introduction of exotics. Many of the ornamental Australian shrubs--blue-gum, acacia, Norfolk Island pine-and many of our English trees, such as elm, beech, willow, fir, ash, and oak, are already introduced; every grain, fruit, flower, and vegetable of the British isles is now seen in full perfection in the fields, orchards, and gardens; cresses mantle the little homestead brooks, and mushrooms abound in the pastures; whilst clover, turnip, cabbage, carrot, spinach, mint, thyme, and various stray vegetables and garden plants, spreading themselves over the country in some apparently unaccountable manner, are found in many districts mixed up with the indigenous vegetation of the country and almost threatening to oust even the vigorous natives of the soil.

Flora and Pomona, however, have dealt most niggardly with New Zealand: there is no indigenous flower equal to England's dog-rose, no indigenous fruit equal to Scotland's cranberry.

Arriving in New Zealand from Africa where the flowers are as fine as the foliage is mean, and where in shooting we flushed the humming-bird through crimsoned acres of geraniums, we were all forcibly struck with the universal greenness of the New Land. The forests are green, green everywhere and always, green of all hues, nothing but green; and our pure woodland scenery, though beautiful enough, needs fifty flower-bearing trees like the gaudy Rata, and a hundred peony tulip dahlia ranunculus and rhododendron-like shrubs, to give it deeper colours and more varied brilliancy.

Poor in wild flowers, New Zealand is even poorer in wild fruit. The Kiekie, our wild pine-apple, which one author calls "a vegetable luxury like a juicy pear flavoured with vanilla,” is a vegetable impostor far more like a sweet artichoke flavoured with pitch. The Poroporo, the nicest or least nasty

*These beautiful evergreens, intermingled with the Australian acacia and blue-gum, and the English rose, laurel, lilac and laburnum, form shrubberies around many of the New Zealand cottages of a beauty and variety impossible to describe.