282 Transactions. — Botany. 



against them in the east. The very limited area in which the- 

 final struggle would take place would also much favour those 

 better equipped for the fight. Also, the plants in question are 

 not usually plants of the dense forest, but rather of its out- 

 skirts, where even at the present day in a region so wet as 

 Westland the conditions are essentially favourable to semi- 

 xerophilous vegetation." Hybridization might also play a 

 part, for in the third stage of these plants we have almost the 

 ancestral stage reproduced, or, as I put it in a former paper, 

 " reinstatement of a species."! On the Chatham Islands 

 this struggle between eastern and western plants, between 

 xerophytes and hygrophytes, can never have taken place, and 

 the only struggle must have been between the Pliocene plants 

 themselves, and any evolutionary changes would be owing to 

 local conditions. That these conditions have had little effect 

 seems proved by the fact that the seedlings of Chatham Island 

 plants show so few changes during their development. Thus 

 the present vegetation of the Chatham Islands may in large 

 measure be almost the same as that which occupied New 

 Zealand in the older Pliocene period. 



Other facts seem to support the above view, such as the 

 distribution of Myosotidium nobile and of the macrocephalous 

 Olearias, &c, but I reserve the whole matter for fuller treat- 

 ment. 



I must not close this particular portion of my subject 

 without expressing my very great obligation to Captain F. W. 

 Hutton for much valuable advice and assistance in this 

 matter.} 



No. 779. Veronica odora, Hook. f. Plate XL, figs. 21-26. 



(Syn. V. buxifolia, Benth., var. odora, T. Kirk, in Trans. 



N.Z. Inst., vol. xxviii., p. 524.) 



The seed was collected on the 26th February, 1899, from 

 plants growing on Mount Isabel, Hanmer Plains district, at. 

 an altitude of 970 m. It was sown on the 4th September, 

 1899, and commenced to germinate on the 1st November,. 

 1899, but, although a large proportion of the seeds had germi- 

 nated within four weeks or so from that date, some did not do 

 so until the spring of 1900. The seeds were in part sown 

 while still enclosed in their capsules This is a very useful 

 method to employ when the capsules are removed from the 

 plant before the seeds are fully developed, since seeds capable 

 of germination may be thus often procured from plants grow- 



* Ceckayne, I.e., p. 133. 



t I.e., p. 359. 



j The author writes from the Chatham Islands, under date 9th 

 January, 1901, as follows : " Since examining the vegetation here my 

 views have hecome somewhat modified." — Ed. 



