Two conspicuously beautiful olanto of the heath order were also abundant! Dracophvl lum menziesu, with its low spreidrng branches crowned like pine-apples with tulti of stiff narrow leaves, and a shrubby with drooping clusters of white bells, like lihes-of-the-vahey. The familiar genus VeroDKa perhaps as characteristic of New Zealand as Ceimisia, and far more variable :n character, was represented by its most beautiful species, Veronica macrantha with mute azalea-like flowers an inch in diameter. Lnnke most of the Veronicas, this species is an extremely difficult plant to grow i % gardens. It may linger on for a time in a miserable condition, but it has never really been, brought into cultivation, and consequently is not nearly so well known as many of its far less beautiful congeners One of the curious "whipcord" Veronicas with leaves reduced to'small scales also occurs on the pass, -together with tbe'beau tiful and easily cultivated Veronica sub alpina, lately described by Mr Cockayne, and possibly* several others. The so-called "Edelweiss" of New Zealand Helichrysum grandiceps, at best not a very satisfactory substitute for the Swiss plant, is rare in this locality, and one also misses other alpine plants with which one has be come familiar further north.
