INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXXI 
Australia, which hence shares the peculiarities of New Zealand, rather than New Zealand those of 
Australia: this is the case with Pittosporum, Coprosma, Olearia, Celmisia, Forstera, Gaultheria, 
Dracophyllum, Veronica, Fagus, Dacrydium, and Uncinia; of which there are comparatively few 
species in Australia and Tasmania: on the other hand, Stackhousiee, Pomaderris, Leptospermum, 
Exocarpus, Persoonia, Epacris, Leucopogon, Goodenia, and a few other large. Australian genera, are 
very scantily represented in New Zealand. 
í Tf the number of plants common to Australia and New Zealand is great, and quite unaccountable 
for by transport, the absence of certain very extensive groups of the former country is still more 
incompatible with the theory of extensiwe migration by oceanic or aerial currents. This absence is 
most conspicuous in the case of Eucalypti, and almost every other genus of Myrtaceae, of the whole 
immense genus of Acacia, and of its numerous Australian congeners, with the single exception of 
Clianthus, of which there are but two known species, one in Australia, and the other in New Zealand 
and Norfolk Island. 
“The rarity of Proteacee, Rutacee, and Stylidee, and the absence of Casuarina and Callitris, of 
any Goodenie but G. littoralis (equally found in South America), of Tremandree, Dilleniacee, and 
of various genera of Monocotyledones, admit of no explanation, consistent with migration over water 
having introduced more than a very few of the plants common to these tracts of land. Considering 
that Eucalypti form the most prevalent forest feature over the greater part of South and East 
Australia, rivalled by the Leguminose alone, and that both these Orders (the latter especially) are 
admirably adapted constitutionally for transport, and that the species are not particularly local or 
scarce, and grow well wherever sown, the fact of their absence from New Zealand cannot be too 
strongly pressed on the attention of the botanical geographer, for it is the main cause of the differ- 
ence between the floras of these two great masses of land being much greater than that between any 
two equally large contiguous ones on the face of the globe. If no theory of transport will account 
for these facts, still less will any of variation; for of the three genera of Leguminose which do 
inhabit New Zealand, none favour such a theory; one, Clianthus, I have just mentioned; the second, 
Edwardsia, consists of one tree, identical with a Juan Fernandez and Chilian one, and unknown 
in New Holland; and the third genus (Carmichelia) is guite peculiar, and consists of a few species 
feebly allied to some New Holland plants, but exceedingly different in structure from any of that 
extensive Natural Order. * 
2. Species of South American afinity. — The South American species in New Zealand amount 
to 89, or one-eighth: of these some are absolutely peculiar to the two countries, as Myosurus arista- 
- tus, two species of Coriaria, Edwardsia grandiflora, Haloragis alata, Hydrocotyle Americana, and 
Veronica elliptica. Of these the Edwardsia is by far the most striking case, from the size of the 
tree: it appears to have a much wider range in New Zealand than in Chili, and supposing it to have 
been transported between these countries, it is difficult to say which was the parent one; its affinities 
would, hewever, incline us to consider it amongst the aborigines of the former. It is by representa- 
tive genera and species that the affinity of the New Zealand and South American floras is best 
shown, and this most conspicuously by Fuchsia and Calceolaria, two most remarkable genera, 
confined to these two countries, but by far the most abundant to the west of the Andes. Here again 
the amount of affinity is differently displayed by each; of the Calceolarias one is so closely allied to 
an American species, that I doubt the propriety of keeping them separate, while the other appears a 
very distinct species; the Fuchsias are both extremely peculiar, one of them being the only species 
that has no petals. Altogether there are 76 genera common to New Zealand and South America, 
