The Oropi Bush, Tauranga, New Zealand

Abstract

At 8:45 A. M. Ernie (I never heard his surname) called for me in a serviceable Rugby motor-car. We then picked up Mr. Cameron and Alec, also a wellfilled hamper. For the first twelve miles or so the road was good and we spun along at a fine rate past the Gate Pa, where the British suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the Maoris some sixty or seventy years ago. The country looked green and prosperous, lush grass with a few crops of maize, the rich, sandy earth having benefitted by recent heavy rains. Tauranga is famous for trees-horse chestnut, poplar, elm, oak, etc.-and, to judge by some of the plants, the soil must be very rich. I found the leaves of the puka and whau four times as large as at Auckland and further north. A Scotch thistle which I dug up in a Tauranga garden covered a space of fifteen feet in circumference, with a stalk four inches through and no less than one thousand flower buds -I counted them.