NEW ZEALAND PLANTS AND THEIR STORY. 
CHAPTER I. 
HOW THE PLANTS HAVE TOLD THEIR STORY. 
How the plants are made to “tell their story’”°—Banks and Solander—Banks’s 
love of natural history—The Forsters, father and son—Cook’s second voyage 
—Why Banks did not accompany Cook—Menzies—Dumont D’Urville and 
Richard—‘“ Essai d’une Flore de la Nouvelle Zélande ”—The Cunninghams 
and the plant-life of northern Auckland—Raoul, the French botanist—The 
Rev. William Colenso—Colenso’s discovery of alpine plants on the Ruahine 
Mountains—The wonderful work of Sir Joseph Hooker—Darwin’s remarks on 
Hooker’s work—The botanical exploration of the Southern Alps—Sinclair, 
Bidwill, Haast, Hector, and Buchanan—Lyall, surgeon on the ‘“‘ Acheron” 
—The botanical exploration of the Chatham Islands by H. H. Travers and 
F. A. D. Cox—Modern New Zealand botany and Thomas Kirk—Cheeseman’s 
“Manual of the New Zealand Flora’’—D. Petrie and the flora of Otago— 
The plants still telling their story. 
THE plants of any country, could they speak, would have not only 
a surpassingly wonderful story to tell, but one which, when applied, 
would profoundly modify the destiny of mankind. But they remain 
for ever silent, gracing the earth with their beauty and fragrance, 
and above all making it a place where man can exist, for without 
plants there would be neither man nor animals of any kind. Not- 
withstanding their silence, many ways have been devised to learn 
their secrets. First of all, they have been classified with something 
like completeness, and the all-necessary names given to their various 
groups of individuals. Much further than this have their interrogators 
gone—their relationship to one another has in many instances been 
made out; their habits have been more or less found out; with 
the aid of the microscope their minute structure has been revealed ; 
their methods of reproduction and of growth have been laid bare ; 
the communities which they form are now being eagerly investigated ; 
1—Plants. 
