AN ANOMALOUS ISLAND.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXII, Issue LXII, 6 May 1911, Page 10

AN ANOMALOUS ISLAND.

-4 (C. de Thierry, in the United Empire.) lAt one time the islands of the globe were divided into two classes, the oceanic and the continental. For the sake of New Zealand and Celebes scientific men added another, which they call anomalous. On account of its size and its position as an English Dominion the former is the more remarkable. Revelling in contradictory details, ' which yet build up a symmetrical whole, nature here reveals herself magnificently original and as widely removed from her old-world solf as possible. The very fact that New Zealand can be described either as the Britain of the South or the Italy of the South with : equal appropriateness is proof enough ;of its unusual natural conditions. But . the resemblance is superficial, and ; partly the result of European occupation. That the lakes are deep # and in- , tensely blue, and tie rivers bright and j rapid as they are in Great Britain, that 1 the skies are as clear and the sunshine ias brilliant as on the shores of the i Mediterranean, there can be no ques- ; tion. But above and beyond there is . a marked individuality, for years the j problem of science, and,_ unfortunately, ! passing away. Already ithas been lost in the towns and their vicinity t whose : English air is noted by every traveller. : Before long it will, like the Maoris, Ibe found only in the wild fastnesses of the interior* As New Zealand is continental in its geological formation, so it is oceanic in the limitations of its fauna. Hence ! its anomalous character. Though admirably adapted to maintain a teeming animal life, it was, when discovered, , without a single indigenous quadruped. !Of mammals there are only two—a rat ! with round ears, like a mouse, and a bat. both of them extremely scarce. Snakes are as absolutely unknown as they are in Iceland. Frogs are represented by a single species, but so locai is_ it that it is found only in one spot. Lizards, of which are are twelve, are, comparatively speaking, numerous, none of them being closely allied to those of any other country. Until they were introduced by the settlers there were no bees, and, indeed, few insects of any kind, which no doubt accounts for the remarkable scarcity of wild flowers. Several varieties of motifs and butterflies of no particular size or beauty, a few beetles, mosquitoes, sandflies,- locusts, and grasshoppers complete a list for whose poverty the most ingenious scientific theories can hardly account. ! The deficiencies of the fauna do not, j however, extend to birds, of which there are about 150 species. Nearly 1 all are peculiar to the islands, and the i same may be said of the thirty-four genera in which they are classed. Amongst the most striking is the parI son bird, an excellent mimic, whose .shot-green and blue plumage ends at the throat in a tuft of snow-white curling feathers. Hence its name. It has j a melodious note, which at times is ] broken by a guttural and sneezing j sound with comical effect. A starling, the "huia" of natives^ is a large ibird 4 whose glossy black tail-feathers 1 tipped with white were one of the sym> i bols of chieftainship worn in the hair lor hanging in a bunch from a favorite ■ weapon. The beak of the male is I straight, that of the female is longer and; curved in sickle shape. Such a j marked difference in the sexes does not occur in any other known bird. Not . less remarkable is the kea, a mountain .parrot. It is a nocturnal bird which, i since grass fires and t^e opening up' of ithe country have made its natural food scarce, has developed a carnivorous appetite. Swooping down on a sheep, it tears away the wool, skin, and flesh with its powerful beak to get at the kidney fat, which it greedily devours, leaving its victim to die in agony Thousands of sheep were once destroyed in this way, the nocturnal habits jC the kea rendering it difficult for the runholders to protect their flocks from its ravages. But with settlement if, too, is growing scarce. j But the most remarkable or" New Zealand birds is the kiwi, or apteryx. It has neither wings nor tail, and its feathers are so fine as to "resemble hair or fur. It is nocturnal in its , habits,, feeding on insects, worms, and ; seeds. To the naturalist it is chiefly interesting as the last survivor of a rape of wingless birds, the largest of which stood ten to fifteen feet high One of them, the "moa" of the Maoris, is supposed, to have been hunted for food until quite recent times, a fact .proved by the abundance of remains ' found in caves and old cooking-places |-More or less complete skeletons of eleven different species have been put together, illustrating various periods or growth from the chicken up to the matured bird. It is supposed that the moa was extinct just before the arrival of the first European settlers. < Another species is the weka, which !is like a hen pheasant with the tail I and wings cut off. So inquisitive and j acquisitive is is that ft has been | known to enter a settler's hut and j steal a glittering object from before , ■•=s very eyes. It even intrudes as far las the kitchen of some lonely homej stead m search of beads, spoony or : anything else bright enough to please jits taste, and capable of being carried I ott m its mouth. When a coach is j changing horses in the bush, a whole tamily of these odd-looking birds will sometimes emerge from the fern solemnly to investigate the proceedings. I hey will survey the passengers in the most friendly way, and, in their zea. tor knowledge, even walk amongst the mv J c horses and bystanders. Ihe New Zealand flora is as peculiar as the fauna. While it has only half as many flowering plants as Great Britain, it has three times as many ferns and their allies. There is not a single eucalyptus or acacia fo be found m the islands, a fact which absolutely negatives the idea of a former union. The forests, though destitue of gay flowers and herbaceous plants, have a beauty of their own. In the space of two or three hundred yards as many as a dozen species of trees may 1 seen, varying in height from seventy to one hundred and twenty feet. They are connected by a dense network of shrubs, bushes, and liana, and their trunks and arms support fairy-like hanging gardens of orchids, ferns, and epiphytes Every little stone, the banks of the. streams, and fallen giants of the Bush are covered with the most exquisite ferns and mosses it is possible to imagine. In some parts the whole surface of the ground is kneedeep in maidenhair and the finer kinds or polypohum. Such luxuriance of vegetation is found nowhere else outside the tropics, being due to a harmonious union of humidity, warmth, and .shade unknown to any other country in the same latitude. In the number and variety of the ferns and climbing plants the flora is also tropical The trees and shrubs of Great /xi 1" norm but one forty-seventh part or the flowering vegetation; in New Zealand they form an eighth. There

is no rose, violet, primrose, anemone, or hyacinth, the place of these being taken by ferns and a few shrubs. Tree-ferns often rise to forty feet, the average height being about twenty feet. They flourish everywhere, even at no great distance from the anows of the Southern Alps, surely a unique effect of Nature. A New Zealand botanist who has just returned from an excursion to these remote parts gives a most graphic account of his visit to the Franz Josef Glacier. Its snow-white mass, with its fantastic pinnacles and its innumerable amethystine crevasses and caves, is surrounded not by bare rock or mounds of stony debris, but by a lovely forest of varied hues of green, within whose recessed are countless ferns, from giant tree-ferns to the delicate, translucent kidney-fern and its allies. Even in the solid rock from which the glacier has recently retreated, masses of a tropical orchid —tropical as far as its adaptations go —were in full bloom. The woods of this strange land have all the exuberance of a Brazilian forest without its teeming animal life and riotous profusion of color. They are perenially green. From January to December they stand up in the majesty of a summer which is eternal. They never feel the stirring of spring, the sensuous charm of summer, the sadness of autumn, or the dreariness of winter. Yet withal they are endowed with an infinite variety. Unw a man has walked in the New Zealand bush he can have no conception of the possibilities of one color. There he will find it in every tone, from the deepest emerald to the palest aquamarine. Though the wild flowers of New Zealand are so scarce as to make little impression on the ocean of verdure in the woods, some of them are very handsome. Like the flowers in an old picture, they are unknown to botany, but are none the less in confodmity with natural laws; strikingly original they may be, but not grotesque. As a rule they are almost colorless, white, or pale yellc wor pale green. Two of the ranunculi, of which there are about twenty species, are the largest of their kind in the world; one of them, the Shepherd's Lily, grows in the Middle Island at an elevation, of from 1000 to 2000 feet. The blossom is pure white with a bright yellow centre four inches in diameter. The other is really a splendid t buttercup nearly two inches across; it is!.to be found only on the high mountains slopes, where it blooms in golden abundance directly the snow disappears in the spring. A fine dianthus is the kowhai, one of the most peculiar and elegant shrubs to be found in the whole realm of nature; it grows, umbrella-shape, to a> height of about six feet. The foliage is a bright green, the flowers are 6carlet, shaped like a parrot's bill and produced in clusters which hang under the branches. Besides these there is the yellow kowhai, a laburnum varying in size from a shrub to a tree forty feet in Height. It has small cream-colored flowers with a delicate perfume. Unlike any other country, New Zealand boasts of a characteristic flower in the bloom of a forest tree. One variety favors the shores of harbors or rivers, and is popularly called Christ-mas-tree, because it is used by the colonists to decorate their houses and shops at th,e festive season, instead of holly. When gathered, the flower has little beauty, owing to the undue development of the anthers; but in the tree its crimson, hair-like sepals have a very fine effect, being produced in such masses as to set the whole shore-line in a blaze —at a distance, indeed, it be mistaken for the glow of a bush fire. So sea-loving are these trees that their huge arms .droop low enough to be washed by the spray of the incoming tide. The rata^ another variety, begins sometimes as a climber. Winding in serpent-like coils round a. giant * tree, it tightens its murderous embrace on the trunk until nothing is/ left but a rotten stump; then it stands proudly erect as a forest tree. .One of the peculiar animals from which scientists have estimated the probable age of New Zealand is the tuatura, a small lizard about a foot m length, and of a dark bronze color. It is extinct on the mainland, but is still found on the shores of the outlying islands. It makes no sound, and moves so slowly and so seldom that only the' closest observation can discover a blinking of its golden, eyes, or a slight heaving of its leathern sides. In its tavonte haunts it appears no less mditterent to the driving spray of a winter s storm than to the glare of the summer s sun; so sluggish is it, indeed tnat it can be kept in a glass case for weeks at a^time. No less peculiar is a close link between the animal and vegetable kingdom/ This is the aweto a vegetable caterpillar always found in the vicinity of the rata. In the first stages of its career it is a perfect caterpillar growing m some instances to the length of four inches and the thickness, of a finger; but, unlike other species of f, aiDl|7 r . 1* buries itself in the ground With maturity it undergoes a miraculous change. The spore of a vegetable fungus fixes itself on its neck takes root, sprouts, and developes into , tJnn Jl ke a- ST l] b«lr™*, standing two or three inches above the earth The root grows into the body of the caterpillar, which it fits exactly in every part without altering its form in the Whit It °r an -animal substance. »mrfl and dry; so much so, indeed that it can be lifted out of the ground