lO Dendy, The Chatham Islands. 



species and varieties, differing more or less from nearly 

 related forms in New Zealand. One genus (Myosotidiuvi) 

 is found nowhere else but on the Snares, though the allied 

 Myosotis occurs both in New Zealand and Chatham 

 Island. The shrubby and arborescent Compositae rival 

 even those of New Zealand, and Senecio himtii is perhaps 

 the finest and most remarkable member of its genus. 



Our knowledge of the Flora of the Chatham Islands is, 

 however, still far from perfect. We owe most of our 

 systematic information to Travers, Mueller and Hooker, 

 while Diels has treated the subject philosophically in his 

 interesting memoir on the Biology of the New Zealand 

 Flora, of which I have made free use in the preparation of 

 this lecture ; but we may hope that our knowledge will 

 shortly be placed upon a much more satisfactory footing 

 by the painstaking researches of the well-known New 

 Zealand botanist Mr. L. Cockayne, to whom I am indebted 

 for many of the photographs exhibited to-night. 



Fauna. 



The Chatham Islands,of course.share with NewZealand 

 the absence of terrestrial mammalia so characteristic of 

 oceanic islands, and it is perhaps hardly necessary to point 

 out that this deficiency in the fauna is due to the fact 

 that these islands have been so widely and so long 

 separated from any continental area, that no animals not 

 possessed of the powers of flight, or capable in some way 

 or other of traversing large stretches of open ocean, can 

 ever find their way to such remote regions. 



With birds, on the contrary,our islands are well supplied, 

 but here also we find a feature which is very characteristic 

 of oceanic islands, and which is even more conspicuous in 

 New Zealand. I refer, of course, to the occurrence of birds 

 which have more or less completely lost the power of 



