INTRODUCTION. li 
New Zealand. (After Engler *.) 
Orders. Genera. Species. 
Dicotyledones . . .. . 74: 207 697 
Monocotyledones . . . . 12 94, 241 
Gymnospermee . . . . . 1 By) 17 
87 306 955 
The smallness of the numbers of genera and species strikes one most, especially on 
comparison with those for the whole of Australia or with those of other areas. That 
this is not altogether attributable to insularity is clear from the richness of the Flora of 
New Caledonia, computed at 3000 species of phanerogamst. Japan, of similar extent, 
and lying in about the same latitudinal position in the north that New Zealand occupies 
in the south, shelters nearly a hundred more genera of flowering plants than there are 
species in New Zealand, and about three times as many species. 
Flora of the Sandwich Islands. 
Wallace treats this as a subregion of his Australian region; Drude regards it as a 
part of his Indian region; while Engler makes it a province of his ‘ Paleotropical 
Floral Kingdom.’ Considering the complexity of the affinities of the flora and its 
extent, and the fact that no element largely predominates over the others, it seems 
desirable to leave it unattached, without, however, giving it the rank of a primary 
region. Could Engler’s ‘Ancient Oceanic Floral Kingdom’ (which includes the 
Antarctic forest region of South America, the Southern Island of New Zealand and 
outlying islets, extratropical Australia, the Cape, Kerguelen, Amsterdam, Tristan da 
Cunha, St. Helena, and Ascension Islands) be regarded as a satisfactory solution of a 
difficult problem, the Sandwich Islands should be referred to this rather than to the 
Indian region; but the basis of such an arrangement is altogether too hypothetical 
from our standpoint, and it brings together the most diverse Floras. As Hillebrand 
remarks }, the Sandwich Islands are the only Polynesian group which contain a large 
number of indigenous plants of American affinities. Ina previous paragraph (p. xxxix) 
examples are given of the more striking genera or species of the different elements of 
this highly interesting Flora; and Engler’s tabular view of the Flora and its affinities 
affords much fuller information § on this point. Engler’s enumeration contains 669 
species of vascular plants, of which he estimates 500, or 74°6 per cent., to be endemic. 
The recently published ‘ Flora,’ cited below, of the late Dr. W. Hillebrand, who spent 
twenty years in the islands, has increased this number by nearly 200 species, nearly all 
of them endemic. His summary is here reproduced. 
* Versuch, &c. ii. p. 84. 
+ Brongniart, in Ann. Se. Nat. 5° série, 1865, p. 187. 
t Flora of the Hawaiian Islands, Introduction, p. XxIX. § Versuch, il. pp. 104-131. 
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