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my first excursions were near Auckland, at Wai-wera (hot water), where the stream of hot water literally pours out of the cliff into delightful baths, with its comfortable hotel and lovely scenery, with its two rivers, where you go up in a boat between wooded mountains and under trees with ferns hanging from the branches, or with bushes of White Tea-tree (Leptospermum scoparium) their boughs covered with little white flowers looking like long plumes bending over almost into the water, reflected distinctly on the smooth surface. From the delightful beach of hard sand, may be seen bold cliffs with huge trees of Metrosideros tomentosa (plate 29), clinging to the face and on the hill above, amongst the "bush" of different kinds of trees and creepers of every shade of green; you may see in the Spring patches of bright yellow Kowhai (Sophora tetrantha) Clematis, white Pukapuka, or New Zealand Lilac (Brachyglottis repanda), with its large leaves—silvery white underneath—and heads of small cream flowers. Then across the valley on the wooded hill opposite, may be seen large trees 50 feet high, a mass of bright red, these are Rata trees (species:Metrosideros robusta). In the woods, festooned from tree to tree, there is the bramble or Bush Lawyer (Rubus Australis), with long sprays of white flowers, and with it the bunches of scarlet berries of the Supple Jack (Rhipogonum scandens), which forms such a thick twisted mass in the uncut "bush," that you can only get through it with difficulty, and may often be tripped up or half hanged by it. Then all around on the stems of the trees, and hanging from the branches, and on the ground, are lovely ferns of all shapes and sizes. All the flowers I have described and many others, I have seen in blossom at the same time at Wai-wera in Spring. These are common ones, and may be found at Whangarei, Waikomiti, Thames, and other places near Auckland. At the Thames there are many additional ones, some of which Mr. Adams took much trouble in procuring for me, and others I saw for the first time in a ride up the Ranges, for instance, the lovely white Rata (Metrosideros albiflora) (plate 18), hanging down a bank and climbing the branches of the trees in masses of white feathery balls, the tall forest tree of Quintinia serrata (plate 33), in full blossom, the pretty little trees of Phebalium nudum (plate 32), and the graceful Senecio myrianthos.
My next collecting ground was beautiful Taranaki, "The Garden of New Zealand," as it is called, my old home, where we went through the war and had houses burnt, and sheep, cattle, and horses carried off by the natives. It is a beautiful region with its grand peak of Mount Egmont, its mountain streams running over rocks and stones between high cliffs and wooded mountains, with ferns, especially the Hymenophyllum tribe, everywhere, H. demissum, H. polyanthos, and Trichomanes reniforme, carpet the ground in many places, as may be seen in the Forster case in Kew Gardens. In walking up the path, or rather water-course, up the Ranges, 5,000 feet high, I could not resist stopping continually to gather H. pulcherrimum, H. aeruginosum, Todea superba, and the most beautiful mosses with large fern-like
