EEPORT ON THE BOTANY OF THE ISLANDS OF THE SOUTHEEN OCEAN. 253 



Out of a total of thirty vascular plants, six, or one-fifth, are endemic in these islands ; 

 seven are American and not found in New Zealand or any of the neighbouring islands, 

 though two of them also occur in Amsterdam Island ; two are found in New Zealand or the 

 neighbouring islands, but not in South America or in any of the islands adjacent thereto ; 

 while fifteen are common to the American and New Zealand regions. The solitary species 

 yet to be accounted for is Polypodium vulgare, the distribution of which is peculiar, and 

 not specially American. It has a wide range in the north temperate zone, and also exists 

 in the Sandwich Islands and South Africa, but we are not aware that it has been recorded 

 from any other part of the southern hemisphere, except Kerguelen Island, and the form 

 which occurs there is only known elsewhere from the Sandwich Islands. Numerically, 

 then, there is a preponderance of Fuegian forms represented in Kerguelen and the other 

 islands under consideration, as opposed to what may be termed New Zealand forms. The 

 Antarctic flora may have spread from America ; but with all the facts before us there does 

 not seem to be a special affinity between the floras of Kerguelen, &c, and Fuegia, as dis- 

 tinguished from the flora of the zone generally. Taking the New Zealand flora as a whole, 

 and the Fuegian flora as a whole, the former is as strongly represented in these islands by 

 the same and allied species as the latter, indicating a former flora of the same elements 

 spread all round a southern zone, which included a part of New Zealand and the extreme 

 south of America as well as the present isolated spots of dry land in the same latitudes. 

 Assuming the correctness of this view, the former Antarctic flora resembled the present 

 Arctic flora in being composed of the same elements throughout ; though the survivors of 

 that flora offer a larger endemic element in each region, which may be attributed to then- 

 long separation. 



Excluding the two endemic genera in the above table, all the others are represented 

 both in New Zealand and Fuegia. On the other hand, the endemic species exhibit, perhaps, 

 a closer affinity with Fuegian than with New Zealand species. The endemic genus 

 Pringlea is more nearly related to the northern Cochlea ria than to any southern genus ; 

 while Lyallia is allied to the Andean Pycnophyllwn. Of course the existence of a former 

 continuous Antarctic flora, composed of essentially the same elements throughout its whole 

 area, does not exclude the possibility of that flora having been derived from the Andean 

 region ; yet the contrary may have been the case so far as the Antarctic element in the latter 

 is concerned. The eminently Antarctic genera Colobanihus, Accena, and Uncinia extend 

 northward through the Andes to Mexico, yet they are not entirely restricted to the Andes 

 and the Antarctic regions, or even to the countries nearest to them. Thus Uncinia, indepen- 

 dently of the doubtful Uncinia microglochin (syn. Carex microglochin), is represented in 

 the Sandwich Islands, and Accena in Polynesia, as well as in South Africa. In a restricted 

 sense Azorella is only American and Antarctic ; but since Sir Joseph Hooker published his 

 ]ater analysis of the flora of Kerguelen, Azorella selago has been collected in Macquarie 

 Island, which we regard as being within the New Zealand region. Still the New 



