the pretty lentana (lantana ?), with its delicate pink cluster flower and its rough leaf, looking and smelling like that of our black currant. This plant seems to spring up wherever the forest has been felled, like the wild raspberry in North America. We found, indeed, the last shrub very plentiful in this day's ride; but the fruit, though specious in form and hue, mocks the taste by a pulpy substance like cotton. A variety of enormous creepers,-vines, as they call them here,—threw their grotesque coils from tree to tree, not seldom clothing some old dead stump with a close network of large and lustrous leaves, giving it the guise of a dandified skeleton. Here and there pliant leafless ropes, twenty and thirty yards long, and perfectly uniform in size from end to end, swung entirely across the road; while others, dropping from the topmost branches, descended in an ominous loop straight down to a level with the rider's neck, inviting him to hang himself in such plain terms, as to be positively dangerous in weather so nearly resembling that of an English November. But, to me, by far the greatest curiosities in vegetation were the zanthorea or grass-tree, and the tree-fern. The former might with more propriety be styled the rush-tree; for on a date-like stem grows a huge bunch of spikes, some three feet long, from whose centre shoots a single tall stamen,* like a bulrush, ten or twelve feet in height: in the flowering season it is full of honey. There are whole acres of this plant near Sydney, but there the trunks are rarely more than a foot or two high. The fern-tree here attains a maximum of about twenty feet. Its wide and graceful plume seems to rise at once perfect from the earth, -as Venus from the sea,-the growth of the trunk gradually lifting it into mid-air.† One might almost imagine that the tall and dense forest around it had drawn up the well-known shrub, or rather weed,‡ of our English deer-parks into a higher order of the vegetable family. When I left England, some of my friends were fern-mad, and were nursing little microscopic varieties with vast anxiety and expense. Would that I could place them for a moment beneath the patulous umbrella of this magnificent species of Cryptogamia! On the forks of some of the older timber trees grew also the stag-horn fern, as large as the biggest cabbage, the fronds exactly resembling the palmated antlers of the moose and reindeer."

In contrast with the above, or rather as a sequel to it, we must introduce the reader to the interior of a virgin forest in New Zealand.

"Some of the tree-ferns must have been not less than forty or fifty feet high, shooting their slender stems through the dense underwood, and spreading their wide and delicate fronds to the upper air like so many Hindostanee umbrellas. A hundred feet above them tower the ruder giants of the forest, yielding them that shade and

*Spadix he should have said.—ED.

It may be seen growing in its native perfection at Kew Gardens.-ED.
Pteris aquilina, brake.-ED.

shelter which, both in New South Wales and New Zealand, seem necessary to their existence. What would some of my fern-fancying friends have given for my opportunity!-for the arborescent fern was by no means the only kind here. Hundreds of beautiful specimens, infinite in variety, arrested one's attention at every step. Innumerable parasites and climbing plants, vegetable boa-constrictors in appearance, flung their huge coils from tree to tree, from branch to branch-dropping to the earth, taking root again, running for a space along the surface, swarming up and stifling in their strictem brace some young and tender sapling; anon, as if in pure fickleness, grappling and adopting some withered and decayed stump, arraying and disguising its superannuated form in all the splendour of their own bright leaves and blossoms and fruits (for some of the passifloras bear one like a cherry); and, having reached the top, casting their light festoons to the wind, until they caught the next chance object. Grand broad-leaved ferns, palmated like the horns of an elk, niched themselves grotesquely in the forks of the oldest trees; and another kind, long and wide as a double-handed sword, looked so unlike a fern as not to be recognisable but by the mode of carrying its seed. Enormous mistletoes hung upon, and seemed, like vampires, to exhaust the lifeblood of the plants on which they had fixed their fatal affections. The graceful clematis spangled the dark recesses of the groves with its silver stars. Below was a carpet of lichens and mosses and fungi, among which the Kareau, or Supple-Jack, matted the ground knee-deep with its tough network. I had not advanced fifty paces into the bush with the intent of measuring one of the treeferns, ere I was completely made prisoner by its prehensile webs, and did not escape with a whole coat or skin."

It is well known to naturalists and geologists that Australia and New Zealand, both in their Flora and their Fauna, represent an epoch or period of creation remotely antecedent to that which characterises the other hemisphere. Hence these countries have been compared to another planet. Whatever may be the mysterious process by which really new plants or animals are produced on the globe at very different periods, one fact is certain, that in the course of countless ages the ancient organic forms, both animal and vegetable, pass wholly away, and are replaced by others. That the majority of species are simply the result of a natural law of development, so slow in its operation that it has produced no known change within the historical period, is scarcely less certain; and thus, if we find in Australia a great predominance of cryptogamic and monocotyledonous plants, and marsupial animals, we have no reason to doubt that it has not yet reached the period when a higher organisation is destined to prevail. The dry, rigid, and dull foliage which is the characteristic of the vegetation seems clearly a consequence of and an adaptation to the great scanti

ness of water which is the peculiarity and the scourge of that country. When, if ever, will the unknown interior be opened to human research? And what strange creatures will, in all probability, there be found! To meet with a living dinornis, or a wingless apteryx* of new and yet more unsightly form than any known to us through the pages of the Illustrated News, may be the fortune of the first adventurer who can cross some 2000 miles of waterless tropical land. But let us hear the author's own ornithological impressions; and first his account of the "Laughing Jackass" of Australia.

"It is no uncommon thing for a writer to pronounce an object to be utterly indescribable, and forthwith to set to work to describe it. I must try my hand at a description of this absurd bird's chant, although no words can possibly do him justice.

"He commences, then, by a low cackling sound, gradually growing louder, like that of a hen in a fuss. Then, suddenly changing his note, he so closely imitates Punch's penny trumpet that you would almost swear it was indeed the jolly 'roo-to-to-too' of that public favourite you heard. Next comes the prolonged bray of an ass, done to the life; followed by an articulate exclamation apparently addressed to the listener, sounding very like 'Oh, what a guy and the whole winds up with a suppressed chuckle, ending in an uproarious burst of laughter, which is joined in by a dozen others hitherto sitting silent. It is impossible to hear with a grave face the jocularities of this feathered jester. In spite of all reasoning, I could never help feeling that it was myself he was quizzing.

"The Laughing Jackass, or Dacelo gigantea, is a large species of woodpecker, black and grey in colour, with little or no tail, and an enormously disproportionate head and bill-a most ugly and eccentric-looking fellow."

Other feathered oddities of New Zealand are thus described:

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Among the reeds of the river-side, and on a pretty flowering shrub in the woods, the Tui, or Parson Bird, with his sleek black coat, and snowy bands hanging from his neck, was chattering in busy synods, plunging his long tongue into the blossoms, and gathering from them heavy tithes of honey. This bird has a high character for elocution, and is readily domesticated. His mimicry of all kinds of sounds when caged is truly surprising; bark of mastiff, yap of cur, crow of cock, pipe of canary, the deep bass voice and hollow cough of the old man, and the shrill laugh of the young girl, are all within the compass of the Tui, whose size is rather less than that of the English black bird. High above our heads flapped, with heavy wing, the cumbrous Kawkaw, an ugly brown parrot, with a note like his name pronounced by a cabman with a cold.

* These birds are only known as inhabitants of New Zealand, and the dinornis is believed to be recently extinct. Sir Charles Lyell thinks no mammals shared the land with these huge fowls "in their day.”

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Although remarkably deficient in indigenous animals, some very curious birds are peculiar to this country. The Moa I neither saw, nor do I know any one in New Zealand who ever actually set eyes on this gigantic apteryx. If not extinct, the living specimens must be very rare. The Moa, a sort of wingless roc, must have looked down upon her unfeathered brother-biped, man, from considerably more than twice his height. From the length, size, and weight of the bones that have been found, this immoderate stork may have been fourteen or fifteen feet high, and as strong as an elephant.* The Kiwi, a small species of the same family, I saw more than once, although it is now scarce. It looked like a wingless turkey, with grey plumage, more like hair than feathers.

"The Rev. T. Jackson, then Bishop-Designate of Lyttleton, in returning from New Canterbury to England, brought with him to Sydney, where I saw it, a living specimen of the Kakapo, or nightparrot, a very singular and rare bird, with the rudiments of wings, but no power of flight; halfowl and half parrot, it seemed a wretched and abortive creature. The poor bird shunned the light, could not bear notoriety, and died very shortly,-killed, as I verily believe, by human kindness. Its colours were dull-green, black, and yellow; its size, that of a common fowl. But of all the fowls of the air in New Zealand, commend me to him known there by the name of More Pork,' so called from his constant repetition of these two words."

With one more freak of dame Nature, but a most astonishing one, we must leave this part of the subject:

"Of all the strange fungi that I ever met with, not excepting the luminous toadstool of Australia, by which you may see to shave yourself at midnight, the vegetable caterpillar, whereof I saw several specimens found in this district, is the most strange. I believe the insect is, at one stage of its existence, a large grey moth, at another it becomes a caterpillar. When tired of a somewhat dull life, it buries itself in the earth, and, after death, assumes a fungous form; or, at least, there springs from its skeleton a fungous excrescence like a bulrush, which pierces and rises several inches above the ground."

Of the state of religion the author does not give a very definite account; but all that he does say certainly countenances an idea which was not new to us, that the harvest which is reaped by the various Protestant sectaries is rather one of dollars than of souls. On the heathen natives little or no permanent impression seems to be made; and one reason of the failure must be given in the significant words of the Colonel himself, who is evidently an orthodox adherent to the Anglican communion" as by law established:"

* The Moa (we believe) is the native term for the Dinornis. The statements in the text are surely to be taken cum grano salis.-ED.

"One cannot doubt that the success of the Christian missions would have been incalculably greater-perhaps literally catholic, universal, throughout the native population of these islands-had there been one uniform creed and priesthood. It is only wonderful, I think, that a shrewd and cautious people should have so readily adopted a new religion, the professors of which-at first ranked by them under the one generic term of Mihonari-they soon found to be subdivided into innumerable parties,-Episcopalian, Pikopo,* Wesleyan, Baptist, Independent, with Jews dissenting from them all."

"The observant Maori (New Zealander) cannot be blind to such open and wide schism, nor deaf to the virulence of sectarian animosity. He hears of heresy, of antichrist, of the beast! One zealous Christian minister offers brazen crucifixes, images of saints, and precious relics; another anathematises graven images of all sorts and sizes; a third denounces both the former. Poor Jack Maori stands aghast, halting, as well he may, between two opinions; for he is sharp enough to perceive these anomalies in a religion professing universal love, the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Unfortunately, it is an undoubted fact, and certainly no original remark, that Christian zeal and Christian charity rarely go hand in hand; and that our religion, excellent as it may be, is no bond between men where the shadow of a difference of opinion exists."

It does not seem to have occurred to our author, that he was penning in these words the notes and evidences of a false religion with suicidal truthfulness.

A visit to the Protestant Bishop, the zealous and indefatigable Dr. Selwyn, and his missionary college of St. John's, near Bishop's Auckland, is amusing enough. The Bishop received his guests in full canonicals, and in that condition gave them a pretty severe scramble through the "bush," to the serious "solution of continuity" in their nether garments. The chapel was "built and lined throughout with a dark mahoganylike wood, and of which I should without stint or reservation have admired every feature, had it not been for a certain cluster of tall tapers upon the altar!" Puseyism at the Antipodes! The boys in the college seem to have had too much work and too little play, at least in their own opinion; and apparently the Colonel was disposed to agree with them. "I must say, there was among the young faces here a dull aspect that jarred upon my feelings; and if the industrial system as carried out at St. John's be a good one, why are there not more students?" Ah! why not, indeed?

Of the "Canterbury settlement," Colonel Mundy seems to have no exalted opinion. It is generally allowed to have been a failure; for though neither zeal nor money nor interest was spared in its promotion, the very idea of planting an exclusively * 66 Pikopo, Roman Catholic, from Episcopus."