404 Transactions. — Botany. 



lay before you ; and the species novc? contained in the same,"' 

 now named by him, will form the subject of a future paper. 

 Moreover, as an adjunct or minor cause is the fact of my 

 recent return from those dear old sequestered haunts in the 

 dense and lonely forests wdaere I had again been admiring 

 those lovely productions of nature. 



In 1864, Sir J. D. Hooker, in his " Handbook of the Flora 

 of New Zealand," writing on this order, says, " Of the 

 Hejmticce (about 212) here enumerated, the greater majority 

 were discovered by Mr. Colenso and myself, and were new to 

 science on the return of the Antarctic Expedition to England " 

 (loc. cit., p. 498). Since then, owing to many subsequent 

 discoveries, I suppose the present number known of our New 

 Zealand HejmticcB to amount to about five hundred. Many of 

 them are endemic ; some are also found in Tasmania and"^ in 

 Australia, in the far-off antarctic islets, and at Cape Horn 

 and Fuegia ; while others are strictly identical with species 

 denizens of the British mountains and of the South American 

 Andes. Here, then, there is food for thought — whether such 

 productions, now found so very far apart in the two hemispheres 

 of the globe, were originally specially created, or whether de- 

 veloped ; and, if the former, whether together at one time at 

 both ends of the globe, or, if singly, which first. 



And here I may mention a letter I have lately I'eceived 

 from a skilful naturalist in the South Island. I had sent him 

 some living molluscs (univalve land-shells) I had lately de- 

 tected on a living tree in the forest, which seemed to me peculiar. 

 In his reply he mentioned having lately found a species of 

 land mollusc which is identical with a species hitherto only 

 found in Java, and which he considered as proof of these two 

 countries, that and this, now so far apart, having been at some 

 distant period geologically connected. I cannot, however, 

 agree with him in his conclusion ; and I merely mention this 

 as bearing in a slight degree on the finding of the same species 

 of Hepaticce occupying the extremes of both the Northern and 

 Southern Hemispheres. 



Numerous as our endemic species are, some of them are both 

 very rare and local, while others are very common and plenti- 

 ful. Some are generally epiphytical — that is, growing on 

 other species, and on mosses and on some of the smaller ferns, 

 particularly on Trichomancs clongata and Hijmcnophiilliim 

 demissnm, one species in particular not unfrequently comj)letely 

 and closely covering the upper surface of the frond in the 

 former plant with its pale delicate fringes, which are the more 

 conspicuous from the very contrary colour of that dark-green 

 fern ; the branches of many living trees, even the topmost of 



* See above. Art. XXXVII., p. 398. 



