Cockayne. — Plants of Chatham Island. 245 



gathered at first hand from the plants themselves. In conse- 

 quence of this valuable assistance Mr. Kirk treated the flora 

 of the Chathams in a more searching and thorough manner 

 than had been the case previously. 



From the foregoing short history of the botany of the 

 Chathams, it may readily be seen that botanists and collectors 

 have been mainly concerned with the classification and find- 

 ing of plants, and that very little indeed has been published 

 regarding the plant-covering itself, the plant-formations, the 

 conditions under which the members of the formations are 

 living, the plant-forms which these conditions have evoked or 

 preserved, the changes which civilised man has brought about 

 in the vegetation, or many other matters of high cecological 

 interest. It was with the intention of observing and studying 

 such matters, and, above all, in the hope of being able to put 

 on record a fairly accurate picture of a most remarkable vege- 

 tation, doomed in its primeval condition to extinction, that I 

 paid a visit to Chatham Island at the beginning of this pre- 

 sent year 1901. I stayed on the island during part of January 

 and February, six weeks in all, but did not visit any of the 

 other islands, so the details in this paper refer only to the 

 vegetation of the principal member of the group, as notified in 

 the title. I had not time to visit every part of the island. 

 Details on this head are noted in the part of this paper deal- 

 ing with the physiography ; here it need only be mentioned 

 that I camped for eleven days on the southern tableland, and 

 was thus enabled to examine with some degree of care the 

 vegetation of a portion of the island not previously visited by 

 any botanist. And this was the more important since there 

 alone may be seen tracts of country clothed with unaltered 

 primeval vegetation, but which unique and interesting spots 

 are every day becoming fewer in number and more limited in 

 extent, so that without doubt in a year or two there will be 

 no longer any virgin plant-formations on the island, except 

 those of inaccessible rocks or of the larger pieces of water. 

 As I write, Mr. W. Jacobs sends me word that the previously 

 inaccessible forest lying under the precipitous cliffs of the 

 south coast has been opened up to stock, and in consequence 

 the last remnant of the Chatham Island forest will soon be a 

 thing of the past so far as its primitive physiognomy is con- 

 cerned. 



Although Chatham Island is only small, its very irregular 

 shape, the great lagoon which occupies its centre, and the 

 difficult travelling through a vegetation sometimes extremely 

 dense would require a much longer time than I was able to 

 devote in order to make anything like an exhaustive examina- 

 tion of the plant-covering. This paper must be looked upon, 

 then, as an introductory and most general one, and intended 



