THE NATURALIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2993, 26 July 1911, Page 76

THE NATURALIST.

THE SEW ZEALAND FOREST. SOME BUSH AND BIRD LORE. By jAparata Renata. Black, rod, and white pine, totara and miro pine are the trees used in tlhe Longwood forest, Southland, for milling timber. Tho totara is practically all cut out, and very little black pine is left. Young black pines for some reason are rarely to he found. The large trees bore masses of their berries, and do so still. Tho young trees are very slow growers, and do not resemble the adult tree in foliage or form. They grow a mass of wiry, tough, interlaced, almost leafless branches; whereas the adult tree grows a rigid branch with small yew-like fans of leaves. The timber is brittle but durable, and is much used for fencing posts and pickets. A very palatable drink ban often be extracted from the trunks. It is called by bushmen black pine beer. I did not tap many trees in the Longwood for this beverage, but have had many a treat of it in the Gatlins or Tautuku forests,,, etc., whoa fairly parched with thirst. Like most natural products got under varying conditions, it is rarely twice alike in flavour or appearance. Sometimes it comes out quite milky, and at others clear brown to dark dull brown. It soon loses the milkiness if allowed to settle, as this appearance is due to a resinous dust or sediment in the liquid, which soon settles down. In many forests in various parts of the Dominion the black pine trees have had auger bekn Imiade in them by bushmen and others to tap the beverage. Bushmen generally select some trees of a medium size, and those that have a dark splash on one side of the trunk. This mark is often caused by exuding sap at a shake or fissure in the trunk, on which a short, black plush-like fungoid growth is generally found. A wooden pail is tho most common receptacle for the sap when it is being drawn daily and systematically, but billies and pannikins are often used when the liquid is to be used at once. Tin taints it badly if left in sucb a vessel. Auger holes are often plugged! with a piece of wood to prevent any surplus going to waste where the trees are not plentiful. In such cases more sap can be drawn when required. I was in a piece of bush near Glenomaru last year where the trees were plentiful and being used then for sawmilling, and found that every tree likely to contain sap had been bored, but none of them had been plugged. The sap requires special treatment to make it keep. For one tiling, it must be boiled,, and this must be done in a perfect piece of enamelware, otherwise it would be tainted. Possibly clean copper or brass would answer, but an aluminium pot would be the ideal boiler for the purpose. A well-educated' Maori was staying with me for a few days, and while passing through the bush close to my camp be saw many black pine trees, and asked me if I had tapped any. I told him I had often got a drink of the black pine beer from settlers when they had felled a tree for posts. He said he wished to have the beer in. place of tea '‘and coffee, as he preferred it if got from a good tree, and said he would show me how to get it when I wanted some at midday in hot weather. He got an agger from a settler and soon had what he considered a XXXX sample. We drew two bottles that day, and plugged the auger hole with a mako spile. Next day we emptied the tree and replugged it. The Maori was with me for only a few days, but later on I often resorted to the same process on other trees. Some trees have no sap, and others ! have from a pint to 10 gallons or more. To really enjoy a drink of it one must be very thirsty and unexpectedly find a good supply in the heart of the forest where no other good drink is to be had. I have often bad such a lucky experience when carrying an empty billy and pannikins. To describe the flavour of this varying sap would be impossible. Suffice it to say that in most oases it is palatable, and in many instances a very agreeable beverage, with a distinct and pleasant aroma. If it were not so no one would trouble about it when they could get tea, coffee, or cocoa. It is strictly teetotal, as it is devoid of alcohol. I think the heart wood of some sound trees if desiooated boilod would mako a somo- ~\\ n&t similar fcovoragO'. My roason for thinking so is that when some sound trees are cut up and split into firewood the whole locality is perfumed pleasantly with the aroma characteristic of the sap. Another bush drink is often got from the lawyer supplejack. A length of a vine of the bramble or lawyer is cut 2ft to 6ft in length f rorn one naturally lin to 3in in diameter, the larger or thicker it is the better. This is held horizontally while being tanered like_ a lead pencil for tin to 6in at one end. it is then hung up, vertically, taper end downwards; froth generally forms for a second or two; at the low end a crystal sap then starts to drip out rapidly, and sometimes in a good vine from an egg cup to half a pint can be got. The sap is as tasteless as ram water when the vine is a good one for the purpose. Knowing this fact has often been of service to bushmen when travelling or working in the forest. . interesting tree found isolated m almost any New Zealand forest is the nulkwocd (Paratrophis microphyllus), botamcaily classed in the nettle family. Messrs Laing and Blackwell describe it as a “tree 30ft to 40ft in height. If a dit be cut m the bark of this tree a thick, sweet, ! milky juice will flow from it.” This juice, requires a lot of time to flow, and a number of cuts made diagonally to the trunk ot the tree have to be made. All moss and decayed matter has to bo removed from the outer bark of the tree, and the cuts made into the junction of tho bark and wood and led into a main channel. A cup or more of the sap can thus be got in about an hour. Like other natural products, it varies in taste, and is often worthless. As the tree is usually over a foot in diameter and in many oases 50ft, in height, it. mny appear strange that it should bo included by botanists in the nettle family of Wants. But there is a great difference in form and size of, many plants cf the one genera. Even the New Zealand eh mb nettle, very common on the littoral of both is'ands (Urtica ferrox), the fierce nettle, is not, much like the small English species, though it soon proclaims itself if one is unfortunate enough to get among its stinging hairs, which are often half an inch long. The poison affects some peoole. seriously, and the pain caused does not cease, for two or throe days. Although it does not leave ■any bad results on me, I avoid contact with its stings very carefully. I have got fairly away from the forest again, but would like to, give _my readers some information about, the insect life in the Long-

wood, which is the most accessible and interesting' forest oast of the West Coast. In the hot summer days a large spider wasp can often bo seen skimming along tracks and open patches of bush. It is nearly, an inch. long, and of the most intense bright or burnished steel blue in colour. It is exceedingly active, and hard to keep in view on that account. It is not common, but a few can be seen in a day’s strolling about. Ichneumons or vibrating flies can also be found. One large species, coloured black and red, is a most interesting object. It has most peculiar ogg-laying organs. It is oyer an inch long, •and rare. A smaller ichneumon is more plentiful. The life history of the family causes its species to be plentiful in someseasons, and then it nearly dies out. The adult female lays her eggs under the skin of a caterpillar. This accounts for the extraordinary organs like fine needles and hooks. The eggs hatch on their host, and the grubs grow to maturity, devouring their host while it is living, but finally attack the vital organs and cause its death. Then they spin their cocoons in an attached heap and finally enter the pupa state. When summer approaches the fullv-developed ichneumons ©at their way out of these cocoons. This process continued yejar in and year -out soon diminishes the suppljy of caterpillars, and then the female ichneumons have few or no nurseries for their larvae, and fail to r-ea r any. Thus the balance of nature is disturbed again by a dearth of ichneumons and the species of moth and its larvae, the caterpillar, again get an opportunity to increase. If the ichneumons had entirely died out they would, of course, have disappeared from the face of the earth. No doubt this takes place with both the host and parasitical fly at times, and then they both become os extm-ct as tli-e moa. I ia.m fairly sure t-lais .has not taken place with the above inh sects so far. The vegetable caterpillar can be found in many localities in the Longwood forest. A special illustrated article on these caterpillars appeared in the Otago Witness on August 24 last year, under the heading “Oordiceps Robertsii.” In this I wrote as follows: “As I wish in writing this to assist those in search of specimens to help to determine what moth is the parent of the grub ... I record imy personal experience of how I found the living grub, and the fungus on dead specimens of it.” One might be fortunate enough to find out a spot where they can be found from someone cutting a water race, tramway line, or cultivating a piece of nowly-cleaired bush land. At the same time, it would be best to search the ground for the club-like seed frond, which is often Sin high, by removing dead leaves, twigs, etc., on slopes and dry side hills m the bush. If found, there are generally plenty close by. Then large, deep sods should be taken up and searched for the great creamy caterpillar, with a bright brown bead and thorax. When found, if should be placed in a perforated tin full of earth, with no perforation Large enough for it to escape. In time, if kept in a cool, damp place in imitation of the forest conditions, it will develop into the moth. It seems strange that this apparently has not been accomplished so far. No doubt some of our entomologists will succeed in -deter min big beyond dispute, and very soon> which moth is the true parent of this interesting grub. I went on an insect-hunting expedtion with an enthusiastic entomologist in the Longwood forest. We turned over logs, tore rotten ones to shreds, dragged great sheets of bark off dead and decayed logs, dug great trenches among peat banks, upturned moss banks, and generally made things lively for spiders, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, and bugs generally. We got cockroaches carrying eggs almost their own size and held to them my special clips. We got insects that coloured everything a bright lake when crushed. They would make beautiful ink, but are very rare. We got more than we searched for, and my friend; was not satisfied because we bad failed to get a peropatus —a cross between the centipede and worm, I believe. Be this as it may, it is no beauty, and only sought as extremely interesting to evolutionists to illustrate the theories of changes connected with their beliefs. It was a great bug hunt, and my friend remarked, over a whisky and soda indulged in, after such a huge task, for resuscitating two exhausted hunters, “that New Zealand was a grand country for spiders.” We got such a variety of insects that my mind was in a tangle over them. The kamahi mentioned recently is a very common tree in all the Otago and southern forests. It grows 50ft to 60ft high, and averages about 2ft in diameter. It has a thick bark, out of which 13 to 14 per oent. of tannin can be obtained. No doubt this could be extracted profitably. It is very subject to fungoid decay, and large trees are never sound. Railway sleepers were sawn from it at one time, but did not possess uniformity in their lasting qualities, and thus became discarded.

Before leaving the subject of bush lore for the present there is one feature in it I would like to accentuate —i.c., the wondeful diversity of the natural history objects to be found in almost any patch of forest where cover can be got for bird or insect life. The forest is also the paradise of the ornithologist, the entomologist, the botanist, the poet, and the lover of Nature. Even the artist cannot go astray in giving it some of his attention. We will leave it for the present, but not because we have come to finality. In fact, the curtain has only been lifted to allow a hurried, glance at a few scenes in it. As I have said before. the New Zealand forest is one of Nature’s great kaleidoscopes, where no two blends of colour and form are over tlhe same. Some are gorgeous, some delicate as gossamer, others still and qpiet, others full of motion and animation; but all beautiful, too beautiful for man’s possible imitation.