NEW ZEALAND—EGBERT H. WALKER 331 
legumes, and only two genera, Persoonia and Knightia, of the con- 
spicuously Australian family Proteaceae. Few of the Australian ele- 
ments are familiar to travelers from the North Temperate Zone. One 
that a visitor to the New Zealand forest will soon meet, however, is the 
supplejack (Rhipogonium scandens—Liliaceae), a conspicuous vine 
which hangs from the tops of the trees. Another is the genus Celmisia 
(Compositae), whose many New Zealand species are among the chief 
ornamentals in the montane and alpine vegetation (pl. 3, fig. 2). 
Besides the Australian element there are indigenous species and 
genera, found also in the Malay Archipelago and the Pacific region, 
but they are fewer than the Australian ones. The kauri is of this 
group, for certain other species of Agathis grow in Australia, New 
Caledonia, Fiji, and elsewhere. The climbing pandanus (Freycinetia) 
(pl. 2, fig. 2) and the only New Zealand palm (Rhopalostylis) (pl. 8, 
fig. 1) belong to definitely Malayan-Pacific groups. 
The third group of indigenous but not endemic elements is the sub- 
antarctic, most conspicuously represented by the southern-beech 
(Nothofagus), already mentioned. There are a good many genera and 
some species in this group with distribution around the southern 
Pacific, some with extensions into more northern regions. They are 
of much interest to plant geographers in understanding the past geo- 
logical history of this whole southern region. 
Finally, there are New Zealand plants with a world-wide distribution 
constituting the cosmopolitan element. An example is the widespread 
bracken, Pteridium aquilinum, the New Zealand variety of which, var. 
esculentum, grows to such great size, as already noted. Most of these 
cosmopolitan species are seashore or littoral plants. 
These floristic elements and their origin have been discussed by 
various authors, including Wallace (27) and Cockayne (7). The sub- 
antarctic flora has been most thoroughly dealt with by Hooker in his 
introduction to the Flora Antarctica (14) and by Skottsberg (24). 
BOTANICAL DISTRICTS 
More significant to the traveler than the origin of the indigenous 
elements of the flora, is the distribution of the species within the islands. 
This has already been mentioned in connection with the various plant 
formations and their occurrence, but consideration of the species 
rather than the formations brings out more clearly the botanical 
divisions of New Zealand. Through a lifetime of study of the vegeta- 
tion and plants of this area, Cockayne (7) has divided the country, 
exclusive of the outlying islands, into 16 more or less distinct botanical 
districts. There is, of course, some disagreement with these divisions 
and other workers will alter them when new studies and interpre- 
tations are made, as Cockayne himself predicted. The districts are 
