<hw>Titri</hw>, <i>n</i>. corruption for <i>Tea-tree</i> (q.v.), from the fancy that it is Maori, or aboriginal Australian. On the railway line, between Dunedin and Invercargill, there is a station called "<i>Titri</i>," evidently the surveyor's joke.
1895. `Otago Witness,' Dec. 19, p. 23, col. 3:
"Our way lay across two or three cultivations into a grove of handsome titri. Traversing this we came to a broad, but shallow and stony creek, and then more titri, merging into light bush."
<hw>Toad-fish</hw>, <i>n</i>. In New Zealand, a scarce marine fish of the family <i>Psychrolutidae</i>, <i>Neophrynichthys latus</i>. In Australia, the name is applied to <i>Tetrodon hamiltoni</i>, Richards., and various other species of <i>Tetrodon</i>, family <i>Gymnodontes</i>, poisonous fishes.
Toad-fishes are very closely allied to Porcupine-fishes. "Toads" have the upper jaw divided by a median suture, while the latter have undivided dental plates. See <i>Porcupine-fish</i> and <i>Globe-fish</i>,
1836. Ross, `Hobart Town Almanack,' p. 89:
"The Poisonous or <i>Toad Fish</i> of Van Diemen's Land. (<i>Communicated by James Scott, Esq. R.N. Colonial Surgeon</i>). . . . The melancholy and dreadful effect produced by eating it was lately instanced in the neighbourhood of Hobart Town, on the lady of one of the most respectable merchants, and two children, who died in the course of three hours . . . The poison is of a powerful sedative nature, producing stupor, loss of speech, deglutition, vision and the power of the voluntary muscles, and ultimately an entire deprivation of nervous power and death."
1844. J. A. Moore, `Tasmanian Rhymings,' p. 24:
"The toad-fish eaten, soon the body dies."
<hw>Toatoa</hw>, <i>n</i>. Maori name of New Zealand tree, <i>Phyllocladus glauca</i>, Carr., <i>N.O. Coniferae</i>. The Mountain Toatoa is <i>P. alpinus</i>, Hook.