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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 75

Soils

Soils.

The high pastoral uplands have a coating of rich moulds, and this continues fairly good down to the heavy timber lands. The alpine forest is readily cleared, burns clean, and imported grasses grow luxuriantly, cocksfoot being the best, as it withstands fire and frosts. The lower flanks of the mountains hold a thinner soil, which at present hardly repays the heavy labour of felling; while the lower heights are somewhat abrupt and unfitted for cultivation. A margin, varying in width, of fertile slopes and fans fringes the bases of the hills, and, having a natural drainage, constitutes an area of excellent agricultural land.

The upland soils of the coastal undulations and terraces are light loams of moderate fertility, which rest upon transported gravels, the drifted accumulations of eroded hills. On these plateaux are numerous "pakihis," or natural clearings, which are mostly extensive tracts of swampy lands, with a peaty soil resting on thin layers of impervious clay, and non-porous gravels, or, in a few cases, on impacted glacial moraines: these formations all overlying loose drifts. The reclamation of these areas is only a matter of time, as the bulk of them are quite drainable.

Stretches of good alluvium border the rivers, streams, and sea-coast, and form the favourite location for settlers.