12 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
New Zealand Flora” appeared, which at once stamped him as 
one of the foremost floristic botanists of the day. This work, like 
Hooker’s “ Flora Novae-Zelandiae,’ the Handbook, and Kirk’s 
Forest Flora, is one of New Zealand’s botanical milestones, and no 
milestone has ever urged more strenuous endeavour to those weary 
with journeying on the botanical path. Later, Cheeseman has pub- 
lished two fine volumes, entitled “ Illustrations of the New Zealand 
Flora,” giving beautiful figures together with semi-popular descrip- 
tions of typical plants. Finally, not the least important of his 
works is a philosophical essay dealing with the New Zealand sub- 
antarctic flora, the most valuable publication in the domain of New 
Zealand floristic plant-geography that has appeared since Hooker’s 
classical essay in the “ Flora Novae-Zelandiae.” 
Another worker, still full of activity, whose work must not be 
overlooked, is Mr. Donald Petrie. The flora of Otago had been 
investigated to some extent by Hector and Buchanan, as already 
noted, but wide areas remained unexplored. From the end of the 
“seventies”? until the beginning of the “nineties”’ of the last 
century Petrie worked hard in his spare time to fill the blank, 
and so well was the work done that no part of New Zealand 
has experienced such a searching botanical investigation as Central 
Otago. His results appeared in a most useful paper published in 
1896. Since that time he has travelled extensively in various parts 
of New Zealand, and hardly a year has passed but he has published 
descriptions of new species of seed-plants. Petrie also gave the 
first description of the flora and vegetation of Stewart Island, a 
much-needed botanical study. 
There are other botanical workers now with us, most of them 
full of enthusiastic activity in finding out and recording the story 
of the plants, but their work must speak for itself. New branches 
of botanical science have been developed and the plants are 
being questioned in many novel ways undreamed-of by the early 
botanists, so that, ere long, many new pages of their history 
should be unfolded, while facts of fundamental importance for the 
great farming community that we are should come to light and 
our prosperity be abundantly increased. This is no idle dream, for 
more intense devotion to botany—that great science on which 
agriculture primarily depends—will surely lead to new and better 
methods now altogether unknown. 
