c.—e,

Passing through the above formidable barrier to progress —oil some Westland mountains it extends upwards for some hundreds of feet —the domain of many lovely high-mountain flowers is entered, which, when seen for the first time in full bloom, are a, spectacle never to be forgotten. Defined in prosaic scientific language this wondrous natural garden is merely " herbfield," which is entitled " herbfield proper " when mainly made up of mountain-lilies, huge daisies, graceful snow-glories, dainty eyebrights, white violets, mountain-musks filling the air with aromatic odour, silvery everlastings, and, later, plants with coloured berries; or, according as graceful tussock-grasses or striking flowering shrubs rule, is " tall-tussock herbfield " or " shrubby-herbfield." Here and there, where the ground is wet, straw-coloured bog-moss forms a special habitat for striking cushion-plants, sundews (Drosera), tiny heaths bearing red berries, and, above all, gentians of pure white ; or, where the herbfield is hardly a bog, there will be wide breadths of the white snow-marigold and its lovely hybrids with a yellow species—in colour creamy pale-yellow and golden. Nor is there need to climb steep-forested slopes to reach these natural gardens, for the glaciers form an easy-enough path thereto, leading to spots free of snow in summer where perhaps the finest gardens of all are to be seen, as near the Aylmer Hut and that on Chancellor Ridge, but such gardens abound. Life-history of the Upland Forest. To those interested in natural phenomena the glacial reserves afford nothing more fascinating than a view of what is taking place where the ice has receded and forest, shrubland, or alpine garden can be seen in the making. Nature being the skilled gardener equipped with exact knowledge. In various places the procession of events can be readily observed from the appearance of the first colonists on ground abandoned by the ice a short time before, up to the establishment of a close association of tall shrubs, young trees, and floor-plants beneath. In regard to the Franz Josef Glacier, J. M. Bell wrote in 1910 : " In quite recent times (probably not more than 150 years ago) the snout of the glacier stood quite 41 chains to the northward of the present site. ... At the tourist bridge the heavy forest comes directly to the edge of the valley, growing on moraine or the relatively thick product of rock-decay, while above for a gradually increasing height up the slopes the valley may be seen to be bordered by smooth rock slopes clad in a scant scrubby vegetation. The demarcation between the old and the young vegetation is very evident, especially on the eastern side of the valley." So, too, a similar state of affairs is perhaps more striking still just below the terminal face of the Fox Glacier looking from the north bank of the river at the vegetation of the slope on the opposite side. Coming to details, these three habitats are in process of invasion—rock smoothed by the ice, moraine both lateral and terminal, and river-bed. Taking the exposed rock of the Franz Josef from near the terminal face to Robert's Point, though mostly smooth, it is marked by many cracks, grooves, and notches, while —according to the observations of L. Cockayne in 1910-11 —at a few yards distant from the ice there were everywhere patches of the dark-coloured, water-holding moss, Rhacromitrium symphiodon, 2 in. deep or rather more. This moss, through, portions dying and rapidly decaying, prepares an excellent seed-bed in the chinks of the rock, which are very soon occupied by various vascular plants (fig. 7), their seeds or spores brought from neighbouring plant-associations by wind and spread over the surface of the rock by water, the number of species of ferns and lycopocls (spore-plants) and seed-plants which take part in the invasion being about fifty, but of these eighteen barely count. The most important of the plant-colonists are : Four tree-daisies, the mountain-broom (Carmichaelia grandijlora), the southern-rata, the inuka, the Westland-koromiko, the tree-tute, the shingle-speedwell (Veronica Lyallii), the common filmy-fern, the nodding lycopod (Lycopodium varium), and, never dreamed of close to a glacier, an epiphytic orchid—the raupeka (Earnia autumnale). In course of time, the distant small groups of plants become united into a scrub, but only a few except the shrubs persist. In such scrub there are a good many young southern-ratas, showing it to be potential rata forest which, in time, will be united to that, which it adjoins. Taking the 50 species which are the pioneer plants on the rock, nearly all occur in the subalpine belt, and 11 are under ordinary circumstances virtually confined thereto. At first thought it might appear that the descent of the latter to so low an altitude was owing to the rock being so close to the permanent ice. But judging from the rather frequent occurrence of New Zealand high-mountain plants at low levels, and giving consideration to the habitats of these plants in such cases, it seems far more likely that any lowland station would suit such, provided the climate was wet euough, the drainage ample, the sun's rays not too powerful in summer, and competition absent with tall or rapidly-growing lowland plants. Probably alpine and subalpine plants, as a whole, simply live under the unfavourable conditions for plant-life the mountains provide because they are free from competition with ordinary lowland trees and shrubs. Easy Excursions. Besides the valleys, slopes, and mountain-tops clothed with a beautiful and remarkable vegetation, no less than 13,032 acres of snowfields feed the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, each of which, in addition, is about eight miles in length. There are also many tributary glaciers and alpine peak after peak, some of which at the head of the Callery snowfields—not included in our estimate, though a part of the reserves—are still unconquered. This huge area of snow and ice and glistening j>eaks forms a magnificent playground (fig. 10), not only for the skilled mountaineer but for those less ambitious who desire comparatively moderate exercise amidst delightful yet awe-inspiring surroundings. Here we call attention to a few only of the many excursions suitable for ordinary walkers who are not content to limit their excursions to trips up the tracks to the ice or to climb over the clear ice of either glacier as far as the first pinnacles.

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