SOME FEATURES OF THE CHATHAM ISLANDS FLORA. 137 
visible to the naked eye. During part of the year these desolate 
rocks are a scene of busy life. Penguins in apparently countless 
hosts stand in close array from base to summit of the islands. Fur- 
seals (Arctocephalus Forsteri) bask on the warm rock, which every- 
where by them and by the feet of former penguins is polished smooth 
as glass. Here, too, the mollymawk makes its curious nest of penguin- 
quills and guano, and beneath the stones in the latter at winter-time, 
and perhaps all the year round, is teeming life of beetles, amphipods, 
and spiders. Probably these islets are a remnant of a much larger 
land area, and the alga not the forerunner of a future vegetation 
but the last survivor of one long passed away. 
At a distance of about five hundred miles from the coast of New 
Zealand, and almost due east from the port of Lyttelton, lie the 
Chathams. This group has a flora and vegetation quite as interesting 
as its subantarctic sisters, but, owing in part perhaps to the milder 
climate and more northerly situation, of a different character. Sub- 
antarctic grassland, fields of herbaceous plants, rata forests—all these 
are absent. A tree-community of another character flourishes, dis- 
tinct, too, from any other of New Zealand. The trees themselves 
have a very familiar appearance; they look like old friends, but 
one hesitates to greet them as such. Surely this is the common 
koromiko ; but never did one see that as a tree 50 feet in height. 
Here is the lancewood, but where is the well-known juvenile form ? 
Here, too, is the korokio taranga of the northern North Island, yet 
its leaves seem larger and its yellow fruits bigger. The truth is 
that long isolation from the New Zealand mainland has, in some 
way or another, led to slight differences between many Chatham 
Island and New Zealand plants. They have certainly come from 
a parent stock—perhaps one or the other is the actual parent; but 
now, although most closely related, they are for the most part dis- 
tinct enough to be considered species. The lancewood is neither of 
the two varieties of Pseudopanax crassifolium, nor is it P. feror—it 
is P. chathamicum; the koromiko is not Veronica salicifolia—it is 
V. gigantea ; while the korokio taranga is named Corokia macrocarpa, 
and in its larger fruit and broader leaves is distinct from C. buddleoides 
of the North Island. 
Coming now to the flora of the Chatham Islands, the total 
number of species of ferns, their kin, and seed-plants is 236, 
belonging to 55 families and 140 genera. The most important 
