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84 ABOUND THE WORLD.
are the residents of Otago province. There are over forty
thousand Maoris. The gold-fields are the source of its permanent
wealth. Dunedin, a slim settlement twenty 3-ears
ago, is now a thriving city of nearly twenty thousand.
magnetic element is cold and stolid, substantial and sohd.
BOTANIZING IN rERN-FIELDS.
Cordially invited, Dr. Dunn and the writer
The
accompanied
the Dunedin " Botanical Club " on excursions to gather
ferns in the gullies and up on the mountain-sides. Tliough
fatiguing, it was thrillingly interesting ; and the more so,
because — as in Ireland — there are
neither frogs, toads, nor
serpents. How is this, since no St. Patrick banished them ?
Fuchser was a German botanist ; and the small, yet beautiful
flowering plant in America, named after him, is a native tree
in these islands, with a trunk from a few to eighteen inches
in diameter. Tramping over the hills, one is continually reminded
of extinct volcanoes and the carbonaceous period.
Some of the tree-ferns are over one foot in diameter. They
grow straight and erect as chiseled pillars, while their long,
arching, tliick-ribbed leaves spread out like roofs of daintiest
beauty, through which sun-rays can scarcely gleam.
The
birds we saw on the mountains were few, but exceedingly
tame. These natives, the Maoris, neither shoot nor otherwise
harm them. What a lesson to Christian sportsmen !
The kiwi is the last living representative of the New Zealand
wingless birds. These wild birds, so called, will sometimes
take crumbs from the hand, and peck at the nails in
your boot-heels when sitting down to rest in a thicket.
The
moa, a gigantic wingless bird, corresponding to the giraffe
in the animal kingdom, has long been extinct. The bones
are valuable to naturalists. Several skeletons of tliis bird
may be seen in the Christchurch Museum, nine, ten, and even
twelve feet high. Th€ flesh was eaten by the Maoris ; the
feathers were used as ornaments, and their skulls for holding
tattooing-powders.