Fern-trees abound in and about Dunedin, often growing to a height of thirty feet, with noble coronals of leaves,--far more effective and graceful than the fan-palm which is seen in such abundance at Singapore, Penang, and in Equatorial regions. The fuchsias grow to mammoth proportions and to a giant height here. We have never seen this favorite so large elsewhere, with one exception,--in the Summer Gardens of St. Petersburg, where an exotic plant of this beautiful flowering shrub had grown to the size of a tree, twenty feet high. About the suburban residences of this colonial capital laburnums, roses, laurels, and lilies abound, blooming all the year round. Innumerable exotics have been brought hither, and as was remarked to us by a citizen who was exhibiting a fine display on his own grounds, "the plant that will not thrive in New Zealand in any month of the year with ordinary care, out of doors, is yet to be found." This gentleman showed us a tiny flower in bloom, so like the Swiss edelweiss that we asked whence it came, and learned that it is a native of the mountain regions of New Zealand. It was surely an edelweiss, the simple but beautiful betrothal flower of the European Alps. It has a different name here, which we cannot recall. As to trees, the elm, beech, willow, fir, ash, and oak have so long been introduced from England, have been so multiplied, and have grown to such proportions, that they seem native here. Botanists tell us that there are not quite fifty different species of trees in England; but we are assured by equally good authority that there are a hundred and fifty different species found in New Zealand,--an assertion we could easily believe after having been in the country a few weeks, and enjoyed the beauty of its abundant forests.
When Captain Cook first came hither, he fully understood the cannibal habits of the native race, and desired to take some practical steps toward discouraging and effacing such inhuman practices. Upon his second visit, therefore, he introduced swine and some other domestic animals, including goats, in the vain hope that they would ultimately supply sufficient animal food for the savages and divert them from such wholesale roasting and eating of one another. The goats and some other animals were soon slaughtered and eaten, but the swine to a certain extent answered the purpose which Captain Cook had in view. That is to say, they ran wild, multiplied remarkably, and were hunted and eaten by the natives; but cannibalism was by no means abolished or even appreciably checked. Wild hogs are still quite abundant throughout the Northern Island, springing from the original animals introduced years ago.