130 Transactions. — Botany. 



up of quite loose stones, at other times of firmer consistency, 

 and with a greater or less amoum of finely triturated particles 

 of sandstone, yellow in colour, and perhaps containing small 

 amounts of clay. From these shingle-slips rocks not yet disin- 

 tegrated crop out in places, sometimes several metres in height 

 and sometimes at the level of the shingle, presenting the driest 

 of physically dry plant-stations. The plant-life consists in large 

 measure of cushion and patch plants, bearing a most striking 

 resemblance to many Andean plants, so far as oecological 

 characters are concerned — e.g., Maja compacta, of New 

 Granada, looks like Heliophyllum colensoi ; Verbena minima, of 

 Peru and Bolivia, like Baoidia grandiflora ; or Loricaria 

 ferruginca like Veronica lycopodioides. Many of the subalpine 

 plants ascend to this region ; some of the lowland and lower 

 mountain are also found here. Others seem to be confined to 

 stations where snow lies for a long period every year, and if 

 they are found elsewhere it is most unusual — e.g., Luzula 

 pumila, Celmisia viscosa. The principal plant-formations 

 are : — 



The soil of the alpine meadow is often very patchy, there 

 being in many places only narrow strips between shingle-slips, 

 or there may be oases of good soil here and there on the sur- 

 face, and on the margins of these deserts of shingle. The 

 shingle-slip plant-formation is an edaphic formation of the 

 very greatest interest, and may be divided into the unstable or 

 shingle-slip proper and the more stable shingle-slip, which 

 latter contains a much larger variety and number of plants. 

 Some of the shingle-slip plants are, so far as I know, never 

 found in any other station — e.g., Banunculus haastii, Stellaria 

 roughii, Ligiisticum carnosukim, Crasp)edia alpina, Lobelia 

 roughii, Cotula atrata, Cotula dendyi, sp. nov., MSS., mihi, 

 Notothlaspi rosulatum, Epilobium pycnostachyon, and Poa 

 sclerophylla. 



The Western Climatic Plant-region. — This region, so far as 

 it concerns the country here treated of, is an outlying easterly 

 portion of the great western plant region, which extends on 

 the west side of the great Dividing-range right from the north 

 to the south of the South Island of New Zealand, and wliose 

 flora has only been examined in a few places. The small 

 portion treated of here, properly speaking, only occupies the 



