In New Zealand Forests

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7246, 28 August 1933, Page 2

In New Zealand Forests

Though no great traveller, I have seen beautiful landscapes- in fourteen or fifteen countries, and yet hold to it that certain views of our forest spreading round iakes and over hills and valleys, peaceful and unspoiled, are slights as lovely as are to be found. Wnence comes their complote beauty ? Of course, there are tho fine contours of mountain and vale and shore. And the abundance of water, swirling in torrents, leaping in waterfalls, or winding in lakes or sea-gulfs, aids greatly. But to me the magic of the forest — I speak of it where you find is sum unspoiled—comes first from its prodigal life and continual variety. Why, asks a nuturalist, do so many of ns wax enthusiastic over , parasites and sentimental over lianas? Because, I suppose, those are among the most striking signs of the astonishing vitality and profusion which clotho almost every yard of ground aid roof of bark, auu, gaining foothold on tho trees, invade the air itself. Nature there is not trimmed and .supervised, weeded out, swept and garnished, as in European woods. She lets herself go, expelling nothing that can manage to find standing room or breathing space. Every rule of human forestry and gardening appears to be broken. ......... Creepers cover matted thickets, veiling their flanks and netting them into masses upon which a man may sit, and a boy irresistibly tempted to walk. Aloft, one tree may grow upon another, and itself bear the burden of a third. Perhaps twine round parasites, dangle in purposeless ropes, or from loops and swings in mid-air. Some are bare, lithe and smooth-stemmed; others trial curtains of leaves and pale flowers. Trees of a dozen species thrust their branches into each other, till it is a puzzle to tell which foliage belongs to this stem,, which to that; and flax -like arboreal colonist Till up forks and dress bole and limbs fantastically. Adventurous vines ramble through the interspaces, linking trunk to trunk and complicating the fine confusion . . . .The dim entanglement is a quiet .world, shut within itself and full of shadows. Yet, in bright weather, rays of-sunshine shoot here and there against brown and gray bark, and clots’ of golden light, dripping through the foliage, dance on vivid mosses and the xoot-enlacement of the earth. .... Eor a bit of New Zealand colour you may turn to Colenso's description of a' certain morning in early October when he found himself on a high hill-top in face of Mount , Kaupehu, Snow had fallen, in. the

night and the volcano was mantled heavily therewith . The forest and native village on tho hill on which Colenso stood were sprinkled with white, and though tho rising sun was shining brightly, a few big flakes continued to flutter down. Outside tho villago a grove of lcowhai was covered golden-and-russct blossoms, all more noticeable because the young leaves were only on the way. Suddenly from tho evergreen forest a flock of kaka3 descended on the kowhais, chattering hoarsely. The great parrots, walking out on the underside of the boughs to the very end of the branches, began to tear open the flowers, piercing them at the side of their base and licking out the honey with their brush-tipped tongues, Brown-skinned Maori boys climbing the trees brought to the naturalist specimens of the blossoms thus opened by tho big beaks. The combination of tho golden-brown flowers and green forest; tho rough-voiced parrots, olive-brown and splashed with red, swaying on the slender branchtips; and tho sun-linght gleaming on x i.o white snow, made the background, a picture as brilliant as curious —Tho Hon. William Pembcr Beeves, in "NEW ZEALAND. ’’ (London: Adam and Charles Black. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.)