312 Transactions . — Botany. 



Generally speaking, the consensus of opinion amongst 

 botanists is against seeds being brought in appreciable quanti- 

 ties over wide stretches of ocean, and I do not think that any 

 one at the present time claims that all the ancestors of the 

 New Zealand flora arrived in this manner. 



As tovs'hether the Southern Islands got their New Zealand 

 element by wind-carriage, water-carriage, bu'd-carriago, tkc, 

 I will only make one or two remarks. The seeds of New 

 Zealand plants as a whole do not germinate very readily ; 

 nor will the majority germinate at all unless the conditions 

 be very favourable. Seeds of introduced plants in New Zea- 

 land, even those of most aggressive species, rarely produce 

 plants that come to maturity in undisturbed ground in moun- 

 tain regions where introduced animals, including man, have 

 never been. Even on the lowlands it is the ground that has 

 been disturbed that they seize upon, and it is under artificial 

 conditions that they exterminate indigenous plants. Plants 

 from a liower-garden, even when they seed freely and produce 

 young plants in the garden itself, rarely invade the suiround- 

 ing country by means of seedlings. So far as I have observed, 

 it is only plants with certain special adaptations which become 

 naturalised in special positions and there become dominant. 



The presence in the Auckland Islands of a New Zealand 

 rata forest — i.e., not of a number of separated species, but of 

 a distinct plant-formation such as one might encounter in 

 many parts of the South Island — is a matter bearing directly 

 upon the question of former land-connection between the 

 southern parts of the New Zealand biological area. This 

 rata forest, wanting some few of its usual constituents, in- 

 deed, but otherwise, excepting for its peculiar physiognomy, 

 which is in harmony with the climatic conditions, is a true 

 New Zealand rata forest, a combination of Metrosideros 

 luctda, Panax sivq^lex, Dracophyllum Unicjifoliuvi, Goprosma 

 fcetidissivia, Suttonia divaricata, beneath the shade of which 

 are the ferns, mosses, liverworts, and lichens which one 

 would expect to be there. Were the tree Weinmannni race- 

 7)wsa present nothing would be wanting. The presence of 

 such a forest some hundreds of miles from New Zealand is 

 to me a most striking fact. It is quite conceivable how seeds 

 or fruits of many plants might be brought by wind, by birds, 

 or other agencies, but that such should consist in large mea- 

 sure of the plants of some special formation, and that they 

 should arrange themselves in almost exactly the same manner 

 as they did in the land of their nativity, is a matter much 

 more difficult to believe than that New Zealand has extended 

 to the south far beyond its present limits, and that on such 

 land a previously existing forest has slowly moved southwards. 

 This brings us at once to the question of what evidence there 



