XXVI FLORA OF NEW ZEALAND. 
gists, with those laws that govern animal life also; but there is nothing in what is assumed above, 
in favour of the antiquity of species and their wide distribution, that is inconsistent with any theory 
of their origin that the speculator may adopt. My object has not so much been to ascertain what 
may, or may not, have been the original condition of species, as to show that, granting more scope 
for variation than is generally allowed, still there are no unassailable grounds for concluding that 
they now vary so as to obliterate specific character; in other words, I have endeavoured to show 
that they are, for all practical purposes of progress in botanical science, to be regarded as perma- 
nently distinct creations, which have survived great geological changes, and which will either die 
out, or be destroyed, with their distinctive marks unchanged. We have direct evidence of the 
impoverishment of the flora of the globe, in the extinction of many most peculiar insular species 
within the last century; but whether the balance of nature is kept up by the consequent increase of 
the remainder in individuals, or by the sudden creation of new ones, does not appear, nor have 
we any means of knowing: if the expression of an opinion be insisted on, I should be induced to 
follow the example of an eminent astronomer, who, when the question was put to him, as to whether 
the planets are inhabited, replied that the earth was so, and left his querist to argue from analogy. 
So with regard to species, we know that they perish suddenly or gradually, without varying into 
other forms to take their place as species, from which established premiss the speculator may draw 
his own conclusions. 
And now that I have brought these desultory observations to a close, I cannot review them 
without fearing that I may incur the charges of, on the one hand, attempting to promote a spirit of 
theoretical inquiry amongst those naturalists of the distant colony whom I would fain instruct ; and 
on the other, of giving way to it myself, and occupying the time of my readers with what is with 
too many the foundation of fruitless controversy. In answer to the first I would say, that the 
speculations which I have endeavoured to combat are becoming widely spread amongst superficial 
observers, and are quoted every day as objections to the devotion of time and labour to a syste- 
matic inquiry into any branch of Natural History. The very many aspirants to a knowledge of 
science whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in the Colonies, though well educated in the 
ordinary acceptation of the term, have never been trained to habits of observation, or of reasoning 
upon what they read in the book of nature, nor have they been grounded in the elements of natural 
science; they are hence prone to rely for information on these speculative subjects (which they seek 
with avidity) upon a class of works that are, with very few exceptions, by authors who have no 
practical acquaintance with the sciences they write about, or with the facts they so often distort. 
I have further had a more practical object in view—the offering of theoretical reasons for inculcating 
caution on the future botanists of New Zealand; I have endeavoured to make it clear to those who 
may read these remarks, that systematic botany is a far more difficult and important object than 
is generally supposed; that the progress the student will make himself, and hence that the science 
will make in his country, is not to be measured by the number of new species he may find, but by 
his manner of treating the old, and his desire to regard all as parts of the vegetable kingdom, and 
not of the New Zealand Flora only; and that there is no surer sign of his not appreciating the aim 
and scope of the science he cultivates, than a craving to load it with names, and to take contracted 
views of species, their variation and distribution. 
To those who may accuse me of giving way to hasty generalization or loose speculation on the 
antiquity and dispersion of plants over parts of the Southern Hemisphere, I may answer, that no 
speculation is idle or fruitless, that is not opposed to truth or to probability, and which, whilst it 
