Their prevailing colours are yellow, brown, light green, and grey.

Light and heat penetrate them everywhere.
The cool, noiseless forests of New Zealand are deep jungles, giant thickets, like those tropic labyrinths where traveller and hunter have to cut their path through tangled bushes and interlacing creepers.
Their general hue is not light but dark green, relieved, it is true, by soft fern fronds, light-tinted shrubs, and crimson or snow-white flowers.

Still the tone is somewhat sombre, and would be more noticeably so but for the prevalent sunshine and the great variety of species of trees and ferns growing side by side.

The distinction of the forest scenery may be summed up best in the words dignity and luxuriance.

The tall trees grow close together.