"The European house-fly is another importation. When it arrives, it repels the blue-bottle of New Zealand, which seems to shun its company. But the spread of the European insect goes on very slowly, so that settlers, knowing its utility, have carried it in boxes and bottles to their new inland stations."
But the most remarkable fact of all has been communicated to me since the above was printed, namely, that the little white clover and other herbs are actually strangling and killing outright the New Zealand flax, (Phormium tenax,) a plant of the coarsest, hardest, and toughest description, that forms huge matted patches of woody rhizomes, which send up tufts of sword-like leaves six to ten feet high, and inconceivably strong in texture and fibre. I know of no English plant to which the New Zealand flax can be likened so as to give any idea of its robust constitution and habit to those who do not know it; in some respects the great matted tussocks of Carex paniculata approach it. It is difficult enough to imagine the possibility of white clover invading our bogs, and smothering the tussocks of this carex, but this would be child's play in comparison with the resistance the phormium would seem to offer.
The causes of this prepotency of the European weeds are probably many and complicated; one very powerful one is the nature of the New Zealand climate, which favors the duration of life in individuals, and hence gives both perennials and annuals a lengthened growing season, and, in the case of some, more than one seed crop in the year. This is seen in the tendency of mignonette and annual stocks to become biennial and even perennial, in the indigenous form of Cardamine hirsuta being perennial, and in the fact that many weeds that seed but once with us seed during a greater part of the year in New Zealand. Another cause must be sought in the fact that more of their seeds escape the ravages of birds and insects in New Zealand than in England; the granivorous birds and insects that follow cultivation not having been transported to the antipodes with the weeds, or, at least, not in proportionate numbers.
Still the fact remains as yet unaccounted for, that annual weeds, which, except for the interference of man, would with us have no chance in the struggle with perennials, in New Zealand have spread in inconceivable quantities into the wildest glens long before either white men or even their cattle and flocks penetrate to their recesses. Such is the testimony of Drs. Haast and Hector, and Mr. Travers, the original explorers of large areas of different parts of the almost uninhabited middle island, and who have sent to me, as native plants, from hitherto unvisited tracts, British weeds that were not found in the island by the careful botanists (Banks, Solander, Forster, and Sparrmann) who accompanied Captain Cook in his voyages; and which were not found by the earlier missionaries, but which of late years have abounded on the lowlands near every settlement.
This subject of the comparative great vis-vitae of European plants, as compared with those of other countries, involves problems of the highest interest in botanical science, and the subject is as novel as it is interesting; it is quite a virgin one, and requires the calmest and most unprejudiced judgment to treat it well. It cannot be doubted that the progress of civilization in Europe and Asia has, whilst it has led to the incessant harassing of the soil, led also to the abundant development of a class of plants, annual, biennial, and perennial, which increase more rapidly and obtain a greater development when transplanted to the Southern hemisphere than they have hitherto done in the Northern, and that, in this respect, they contrast strikingly with the behavior of plants of the Southern hemisphere when transplanted to the Northern; and hitherto no considerations of climate, soil, or circumstance have sufficed to explain this phenomenon.
Original.
The Leaf of Last Year
I know I am dry and decayed;
My skin is all yellow and sere;
I know I ought not to have staid
To become an old leaf of last year.
You are youthful, and merry, and green.
I feel like a stranger up here;
And can see you're ashamed to be seen
By the side of a leaf of last year.
My wrinkled and shrivelled up face
Excites you to laugh and to sneer;
And the branch thinks that this is no place
For an old-fashioned leaf of last year.
I can tell, as you toss your proud heads,
What you whisper in each other's ear:
"Old leaves should be gone to their beds,
'Tis no time for a leaf of last year."
You may flirt with the amorous winds;
With your joys I will not interfere:
But I'm sad; for my heart it reminds
How they jilted a leaf of last year.
Ay! flatter and laugh with the breeze,
You may think that its love is sincere,
But I know what it said to the trees
When I was a young leaf last year.
"Each one of these silly green leaves
Is so flattered if I but come near,
That she dances, and smiles, and believes
I most surely will wed her this year.
"With soft kisses the hours I beguile;
And their prattling is pleasant to hear.
When I tire, I depart with a smile
And a promise to meet them next year."
Then it came to my side with a bow,
Embraced me, and called me its 'dear.'
I was foolish to trust it, and now
It forgets its old love of last year.