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ON COLLECTING FOSSIL VEGETABLES. Alb 
and Australia, and even possesses some species identical with 
those of Europe, without the latter being referable to an in- 
troduction by Europeans, yet the greater number of Species, 
and even genera, are peculiar to it. New Zealand, with the 
adjacent islands, Chatham, Auckland, and Macquarrie, forms 
a botanical centre. It is sufficiently distant from both con- 
tinents to preserve its botanical peculiarities, and it offers 
the most striking instance of an acknowledged fact in all 
branches of natural history, viz. that the different regions of 
the globe are endowed with peculiar forms of animal and 
vegetable life. The number of species of plants at present 
known is 632, of which 314 are dicotyledonous, and the 
rest, or 318, are monocotyledonous and cellular. The mono- 
cotyledons are few in comparison with the cellular plants, 
_ for there are but seventy-six species. The grasses have given 
way to ferns, for the ferns and fern-like plants are by far the 
most abundant in New Zealand, and cover immense districts, 
They replace the Graminece of other countries, and give a 
_ character to all the open land of the hills and plains. Some 
_ of the arborescent kinds grow to thirty feet and more in 
_ height, and the variety and elegance of their forms, from the 
2 rar 
-minutest species to the most gigantic, are very remarkable.” * 
“In the accumulations of vegetable matter now in the pro- 
gress of formation in the morasses, bays, and creeks of New 
Zealand, the remains of ferns largely predominate ; and Iam 
informed by my son,} that in the estuaries they are asso- 
ciated with numerous shells of brachiopodous mollusea. 
ON COLLECTING BRITISH FOSSIL VEGETABLES. 
From what has been advanced, the student will perceive 
that to obtain an illustrative collection of the fossil plants of 
Great Britain, many different localitics must be visited® 
* Dr. Dieffenbach’s New Zealand. 
+ Mr. Walter Mantell, of Wellington, New Zealand. 
