300 Transaction-'i. — Botany. 



often their breasts were covered with down, and this was 

 niatced with piripiri seeds {Acana). The albatroses were 

 building nests everywhere." Such young albatroses, on 

 their way to the water (for they do not fly from the neigh- 

 bourhood of their nest, but walk to the sea), would certainly 

 assist very materially in spreading the fruits of Accena, or the 

 down coming off with the attached fruit could easily be blown 

 for considerable distances by the furious gales. 



The fur-seals will have but little effect on the vegetation 

 although they originally existed in very great numbers, hun- 

 dreds of thousands having been killed for the sake of their 

 skins. At the present time they are all but extinct in many 

 places, though on the Bounty Islands they are again becoming 

 more numerous, thanks to their being strictly protected by the 

 New Zealand Government. Their rookeries are situated on 

 the more inaccessible rocks at the bases of precipitous cliffs, 

 where they are exposed to the full fury of sea and storm. 



The sea-lions play a more important part with regard to 

 the vegetation. These animals frequent the more sheltered 

 stony or sandy beaches. Especially are they fond of the 

 sandy shore of Enderby Island, from which they move on to 

 the sandhills and into the neighbouring meadow or forest. 

 On the sandhills and also on the floor of the forest they roll 

 and w^allow about, and as at one time they were present in 

 very great numbers they must have exercised considerable 

 influence in keeping the forest-floor bare, as I have stated when 

 treating above of the Olearia lyallii forest. On the sandhills 

 also they would to some small extent loosen the sand, and 

 may have caused sand-drifting, but probably only to a very 

 limited extent. 



2. Introduced Animals. 



In contradistinction to the effect produced by the indi- 

 genous animals of any region upon its vegetation, which is, 

 of course, strictly a natural one, to which the vegetation as 

 a whole must have become accustomed, and in response to 

 which the plants in certain cases may have developed special 

 adaptations, the effect of certain introduced animals, includ- 

 ing man himself, on the vegetation of a region wliere such 

 have previously been unknown leads to an artificial state of 

 affairs for a time, which has a most profound bearing on the 

 distribution of the various species making up the vegetation. 

 Excepting man himself, of all animals, wliere previously none 

 have existed, herbivorous mammals work the greatest change. 

 When in addition to animals foreign plants appear and come 

 into competition with those proper to the region, and, most 

 of all, when man, by the aid of Are in the first place, and after- 

 wards by agriculture and other means, seeks to " reclaim " a 

 virgin waste, then the equilibrium between the plant-fornia- 



