also very late in the season, about the first or second week in March. Hooker, in his "Handbook of the New Zealand Flora," gives it only as occurring in Banks Peninsula, but it is not uncommon on Otago Peninsula, though like the bush itself, it must be fast disappearing from that favoured spot of earth.
Down in the lower part of the Leith Valley, near Woodhaugh, some more rather rare plants are to be met with, but the wholesale destruction of the bush has already made many former denizens of this sheltered spot disappear, and those named here are fast following in their wake. Here are to be found at the foot of rocky precipices a few plants of the milk-tree (Epicarpurus), very often characterised here as elsewhere, by the diseased appearance of its male spikes. Nestling close to the damper rocks may also be found an occasional patch of a slender, glossy, dark green little herb, with most minute and inconspicuous flowers, known to science as Australina pusilla, which, as far as this part of New Zealand is concerned, is by no means a common plant. In this neighbourhood also, on the trunks of trees, has been occasionally found a patch of that curious little epiphytal orchid with the long name of Sarcochilus adversus. Perhaps, like other rather small plants, this species is commoner than its recorded occurrence seems to imply, being readily overlooked by any but trained eyes, for it has also been found at Sawyer's Bay. It is the only New Zealand orchid known to the writer in which the pollen-masses, after being pulled out of their anther-case, move downwards in such a way as to be in position to strike the stigma of the next flower they come in contact with.
While on the subject of orchids, it is noteworthy that the very curious greenish-grey or brown Gastrodia is not uncommon in the thicker and damper parts of the Belt; while the tree trunks, especially in the Leith Valley, are frequently matted with the pretty little epiphytal Earinas. Of these the narrow-leaved one, E. mucronata, produces its delicate little panicles of yellowish flowers from November to January, while its stiffer and darker-leaved relative, E. autumnalis, bears its white trusses usually about February or March. The latter plant is very common on the rocks of the Quarantine Island, near Port Chalmers. Both species are very fragrant when in flower. The only other New Zealand epiphytal orchid besides those mentioned
