ship-building wood, but on the east coast is rare; as you approach the west coast it becomes common: it belongs to the myrtle family, and is very closely leafed, with small brilliantly-green oval leaves growing by threes around the stem; the flowers are very numerous, small and scarlet (I am told). I have climbed many trees, but never succeeded in finding any seed, nor seed-vessels in any state of decay; but once found three young plants, which I have got; they were growing in a rotten branch, high from the ground, and had roots very much like potatoes, and as large in one instance as a walnut. This accounts for the natives saying there are never any young Ratas. I have no doubt that, like many trees of tropical climates, they never grow from the ground, but to it,—that is, they strike root in the branches of another tree, and afterwards send roots down to the soil through the trunk of their supporter as it decays. It would be a magnificent ornamental tree in England if it would grow (which I think possible), as it would be utterly unlike any tree at present known in Europe: the foliage being very dense at the extremities of the branches, but nowhere else, it looks like a number of small trees, such as box, growing out of one another, or out of the gigantic stem of an oak. The Tanekaha[1] is also occasionally to be met with, but only on the steep sides of gullies; it prefers a poorer soil; it is the most curious tree in the country, being a coniferous one, with the branches proceeding from the trunk as regularly as in any spruce, and yet having broad leaves very like the leaflets of some ferns. The wood is exceedingly tough and durable, but unfortunately does not grow sufficiently large for masts, except for small vessels. Its largest size is eighteen inches diameter, and about twenty-five to thirty feet to the branches. It would live in England, and would be a very great curiosity. In
