112 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE 
tiful dark hue of the prevailing laurel-like foliage of the 
plants around them. 
* On reaching the settlement, I waited upon Colonel Mo- 
risset, the commandant, who received me with the utmost 
politeness, and who upon perusing a letter from the Colonial 
Government respecting myself, (of which I was the bearer,) 
assured me of his readiness to afford every facility to enable 
me to effect the objects of my visit. With this view a go- 
vernment servant who had traversed the island in every di- 
rection, and therefore well acquainted with its intricacies was 
ordered to attend me in my daily excursions. Of the vege- 
table kingdom in this island, none are more remarkable than 
its noble pine (Araucaria excelsa), and tree fern (Alsophila 
ezcelsa,) and as these are lofty plants and generally grouped 
together in small bodies on every part of the island they 
form a most decided feature of the landscape. In habit and 
general appearance, the plants assume more the aspect of 
the vegetation of New Zealand than that of Australia or 
any other country, as much so as the Cowdie Pine (Dam- 
mara australis), a tree also of gigantic stature, in the shaded 
forests that clothe the undulated surface of New Zealand, 
marks a landscape in aspect exceedingly similar to that of 
Norfolk Island.* At the discovery of the island in 1774 
Forster, the naturalist, who accompanied Captain Cook on 
his second voyage round the globe, had an opportunity of 
landing on its north shore, near Cascade Bay, when among 
several unpublished species of plants he detected two new 
genera, the one his Gynopogon, (Alyxia, Br.) of which genus 
the intertropical parts of New South Wales furnish several 
species—the other absolutely limited to the island his Black- 
burnia. We hear of no further scientific remarks having 
* The following plants of Norfolk Island are also frequent on the shores 
of the Bay of Islands, New Zealand—Phormium tenax, Olea apetala, Areca 
Banksii, (A. sapida Forst?) Myoporum letum, Dracena australis, Fr eycinetia 
Baueriana, ied New Zealand plant is probably distinct and may be desig- 
nated as F. Banksii), Dodonea orientalis, Tetragona expansa, Polygonum 
australe, fondi littoralis, 
