220 Transactions. — Botany. 



moss, only found in New Zealand, the islets further south, and 

 Tasmania) ; also, Psibclada and Zoopsis, highly peculiar and 

 beautiful delicate Hepatica, confined, like the former, to these 

 southern lands. Other small genera, each containing a very 

 few species, are Fossombronia, Noteroclada, and Petalophyllum ; 

 while other genera are very large, as HoQkeria, a handsome and 

 graceful moss, and Jungermannia, an elegant Hepatica ; both of 

 these genera being also found scattered all over the globe, 

 including our native land. 



One genus, however, of Hepatica I must particularly bring 

 to your notice, and this is Gottschea, a fine, and pre-eminently 

 beautiful, genus, and one almost exclusively our own ; one 

 which Sir J. D. Hooker, in his handbook, rightly calls " a 

 noble genus ;" of this charming genus I have had the good 

 fortune to discover twelve additional species, (besides those 

 recorded in the " Flora of New Zealand,') and I have little 

 doubt that many more species will reward persevering and dili- 

 gent botanists in the future ; for, as Sir J. D. Hooker has 

 further truly observed, " this genus is most abundant in New 

 Zealand." Drawings of many of its species will be found cor- 

 rectly and beautifully executed by Sir J. D. Hooker in his 

 " Flora Nova?-Zealandia; ; and, also, by his father, Sir W. J. 

 Hooker, in his justly-distinguished " Musci Exotici," whose 

 admirable copperplate engravings of drawings and dissections of 

 those plants, and a large number of cognate ones from this 

 country, must always evoke feelings of wonder and delight. 

 Sir W. J. Hooker's drawings and descriptions of New Zealand 

 cryptogams were published in 1818, and were made from speci- 

 mens collected in New Zealand at Dusky Bay, nearly 100 years 

 ago, by Dr. Menzies, who visited this country in 1791, in 

 the ship of the celebrated navigator and discoverer, Vancouver, 

 as the surgeon of the expedition. Dr. Menzies seems to have 

 worked with a will in his pursuit of science, particularly in the 

 acquiring of the smaller cryptogams, then not so very highly 

 esteemed, of which he made a large collection both in New 

 Zealand and at Cape Horn, and also in other countries visited 

 by Vancouver in his voyage round the world. Several of our 

 cryptogams, discovered by him, bear his name ; conspicuously 

 among them is that magnificent New Zealand moss, Isuthecium 

 menziesii, of which I can show you a fine drawing in the " Musci 

 Exotici." 



And here I may also briefly notice a very curious double coin- 

 cidence, or combination of them, that happened at that very 

 period. In 1791, when Dr. Menzies was engaged in the pursuit 

 of science on the inhospitable shores of Dusky Bay, in this 

 country, the celebrated French naturalist, La Billardiere, was 

 similarly occupied on the then equally little known shores of 

 Tasmania and New Holland. And, further still, specimens of 



