Goldfield and the Taupo volcanic district. The volcanic activity of
the Taupo district lasted into the Pleistocene, and the last eruptions
contributed many of its chief geographical features.[1] (J. W. G.)
Climate.—Diversity of level and latitude cause many varieties of climate in the South Island provinces. The height and regularity of the mountain backbone increase the diversity. Only one pass, the Haast (1716 ft.), crosses from E. to W. at a less height than 3000 ft. Along the whole west coast the climate resembles nothing in the British Islands so much as Cork and Kerry, for there are the same wet gales from a western ocean, the same clouds gathering on the dripping sides of wild mountains, an equal absence of severe frosts and hot sunshine, and a rich and evergreen vegetation. Elsewhere, sheltered Nelson has a more genial air than the Wellington side of Cook Strait. Foveaux Strait is as cold and windy as the Strait of Dover. The Canterbury plain has but 26 ins. of annual rainfall, less than a fourth of that along the western littoral. Very seldom indeed is moisture excessive in the eastern half; there is even a deficiency in unfavourable years, and dry, warm winds do damage to crops. Insect life is relatively not abundant; the air is brisk and bright with ample sunshine. The snow-line, which is at 3000 ft. on the eastern flank of the Alps, is 3700 ft. on the western.
The healthiness of the New Zealand climate in all parts is attested by the death-rate, which, varying (1896–1906) from 9 to 10·50 per 1000, is the lightest in the world. In 1896 it was as low as 9·10. In 1907, however, it was 10·91, the highest figure since the year 1883. Even in the boroughs the average is below 13. The rainfall in most of the settled districts ranges from 30 to 50 ins. a year. Meteorological statistics are collected at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin and eight other stations; and observations of rainfall, temperature, and wind-directions are received from eighteen stations of the second class. From the data thus obtained an isobaric map and a report are prepared for each day; and weather warnings are telegraphed to any part of the coast when necessary. A system of inter-colonial weather exchanges has been agreed upon, and telegrams are daily exchanged between Sydney and Wellington.
Flora.—There are about one thousand species of flowering plants, of which about three-fourths are endemic. Most of those not peculiar to the country are Australian; others are South American, European, Antarctic; and some have Polynesian affinities. Ferns and other cryptogamic plants are in great variety and abundance. The New Zealand flora, like the fauna, has been cited in support of the theory of the remote continental period. In appearance the more conspicuous flora differs very greatly from that of Australia, Polynesia, and temperate South America, and helps to give to the scenery a character of its own.
The early colonists found quite half the surface of the archipelago covered with dense, evergreen forest, a luxuriant growth of pines and beeches, tangled and intertwined with palms, ferns of all sizes, wild vines and other parasites, and a rank, bushy, mossed undergrowth. Though much of the timber is of commercial value—notably the kauri, totara, puriri, rimu, matai and kahikatea—this has not saved the forests from wholesale, often reckless, destruction. Two-fifths perhaps have already disappeared, and it is probable that in fifty years the only large tracts still standing will be sub-alpine woods and in state reserves. Meanwhile charred and rotting stumps give a melancholy and untidy air to valleys and denuded hillsides, for hard-wood stumps—and most New Zealand trees are hard-wood—take more than a generation to decay utterly. Compelled by the windy climate the colonists are doing something to repair these ravages by planting European, Californian and Australian shelter-trees; but it is only in the naturally open and grassy regions of the east and south-east that settlement as yet improves the landscape. There, before the colonists came, wide sweeps of dull green bracken or wiry yellow-green tussocks seemed bleak and monotonous enough. The swamps covered with flax and giant bulrushes were often redeemed to the eye by sheets of golden-plumed toé-toé, a kind of pampas grass.
Fauna.—The destruction of the forest is telling fatally on the native avifauna. In their natural state the islands were without land mammals, and the Polynesian immigrants brought but two in their canoes—a dog, now extinct, and a black rat, now rarely seen. Until recent years the forest birds did much to atone for this deficiency, for among them the tui and makomako rank high as songsters, while the apteryxes, kakapo, weka and stitch-bird are of peculiar interest to science. The importation of stoats and weasels, ferrets and cats has resulted in a process of extermination which has already made it necessary to set aside the islets Resolution, Kapiti and Little Barrier as sanctuaries. The place of the vanishing native species is being taken by such European arrivals as sky-larks, finches, blackbirds, sparrows and rooks. Outside the forest country the weka, an almost wingless bird, is numerous, and in the Alps a hawk-like green parrot, the kea, has learned to kill sheep and holds its ground. The pukeko, a handsome rail, abounds in swamps. The native wild ducks are carefully preserved for sportsmen, in whose interests pheasants, red and fallow deer, and brown and rainbow trout have been very successfully acclimatized. Acclimatization, indeed, had played a chief part in the settlement of New Zealand. Coming to a country without useful animals, cereals, rich grasses or fruit trees, the colonists had to bring all these necessaries with them. So far acclimatizers note but few failures; the chief case is that of the salmon. Again and again salmon have been successfully hatched out into rivers, but the young fish hastening down stream to the sea never return thence. This is all the more unfortunate as eels were the only large edible creatures found in the fresh-water lakes and rivers. Tidal waters furnish minute whitebait, and the mud-flats of salt or brackish lagoons and estuaries flounders—both very delicate eating. Oysters, both mud and rock, are good and plentiful. A strange visitor, the frost-fish, never seen at sea, is picked up stranded on sandy beaches in cold weather, and is prized by epicures. The snapper is at once the handsomest and most palatable of a good variety of sea fish. Sharks are found everywhere and are common round the north, though they rarely attack man. The albatross is of course the most conspicuous sea bird. Penguins are found, confined to the islets of the far south. As some compensation for its paucity of useful animals and food plants, New Zealand was, of course, free from wild carnivora, has no snakes, and only one poisonous insect, the katipo, a timid little spider found on certain sea-beaches. Of poisonous plants only the berries of the tutu and the karaka are worth notice. The wild dogs and pigs which now sometimes prey on the sheep-farmers’ lambs in outlying districts are the descendants of domestic animals which have escaped into the “bush.” Among imported pests the rabbit and sparrow, and a numerous company of European and American thistles and other weeds, have to be systematically contended with. The formidable increase of the rabbit has been arrested, mainly by poison and wire-netting fences.
Population.—In January 1840 there may have been 2000 whites in New Zealand. By 1861 the number was still slightly under 100,000. During the next twenty years the gold discoveries, the public works expenditure, and the development of agriculture, multiplied the number of colonists five times to 498,000 in April 1881. Then increase slackened for many years, and was slowest between 1886 and 1891, when the addition was but 48,000 in five years. In 1901 the whites numbered 773,000; and between that year and the census computation in April 1906 the increase, 115,859, was the largest yet recorded in any quinquennium. In the middle of 1908 the official estimate of white inhabitants was 950,000.
The white population, about nine to the square mile, is very unevenly distributed. In the South Island nine-tenths of the colonists live within 40 m. of the east and south-east coasts; in the North Island the eastern and northern parts of Wellington province, and the southern and broadest part of Auckland province are still very scantily peopled. For all that, Auckland and Wellington are the most populous of the larger districts, while Nelson, Westland and Marlborough have for a long time shown the slowest increase.
Males still exceed females in the proportion of nine to eight. About 70% of the population is New Zealand born. The white foreign element is small; what there is is chiefly Scandinavian, German and Dalmatian. Among the foreigners males greatly outnumber females; even in the case of the German settlers the proportion is two to one.
Between 1880 and 1892 the birth-rate fell by no less than 12·95 points—rather more than 1 a year. It continued to fall for seven years more, though at a much reduced rate, and finally reached 25·12 in the year 1899. In the next eight years there was a slow recovery to 27·30 in 1907. Thanks, however, to the low death-rate, elsewhere referred to, the margin of
- ↑ See the geological map of New Zealand by Sir James Hector (1884). A brief sketch of its geological history is given by Hutton, Trans. New Zealand Inst. (1899), xxxii. pp. 159-183. Fullest information about the geology of New Zealand is given in the Reports of Geological Explorations issued by the Geological Survey of New Zealand, and the Annual Reports of the mines department. A bibliography of the chief literature has been compiled by A. Hamilton, Trans. New Zealand Inst. (1903), xxxv. 489-546.
