32 PLANTS OF NEW ZEALAND 



times, but by the Eocene, much of it had disappeared. Thus 

 far, the problem of the Australian relationships of our flora is 

 comparatively simple, but on further examination we are soon 

 confronted with the fact, that, although New Zealand plants 

 show so many Australian affinities, yet most of the prevailing 

 and characteristic Australian forms are entirely absent from 

 our shores. An attempt to explain this anomaly will require 

 a somewhat fuller comparison of the two floras. 



The Floras of New Zealand and Australia. 



Isolation, varied environments, and doubtless other facts, 

 have been at work for a long time to give New Zealand a 

 unique flora. A visiting botanist would find here only 

 unknown plants around him. He would be puzzled, not only 

 by the strange local species, but also by the large number of 

 dissimilar plant associations to be met with in a small area. 

 Perhaps there is no more difficult flora in temperate regions 

 for the botanical tyro to classify. It seems to be a mixture of 

 many incongruous elements. The visitor from Australia 

 would be little better able to cope with its difficulties, than the 

 traveller from England. In spite of the fact that so many of 

 the New Zealand genera are also to be found on the 

 neighbouring continent, no adjacent floras elsewhere are so 

 unlike as those on either side of the Tasman Sea. Yet the 

 distance between the two lands is little more than a thousand 

 miles. This likeness with unlikeness constrained Sir Joseph 

 Hooker to say : " Under whatever aspect I regard the flora of 

 Australia and New Zealand, I find all attempts to theorize 

 on the possible community of feature, frustrated by anomalies 

 of distribution, such as I believe no two other similarly 

 situated countries on the globe present." 



The New Zealand forest is varied and mixed. The 

 Australian often varies little over immense areas of countrv. 



