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Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 October 1940, Page 9

“My father has told me that when he first went to the Dunstan, in Central Otago, in the early sixties, one could lose a bullock among the tussocks,” said Dr F. W. Hilgendorf in an address to the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand. “You could hardly lose a mouse there now, because the tussocks are so small. The probable explanation of the change is that the tussocks of the early days were just able to survive in spite of the dryness of the climate, but when fires and sheep and rabbits came to aid the drought, the equilibrium, unstable at best, was overset and the tussocks disappeared." Dr Hilgendorf produced a fullgrown specimen of the tussock that is now dominant on the Raggedy Hills near Alexandra. "You see.” he said, “it is about the size of a button mushroom, and would have some difficulty in hiding a bullock."