20 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



coast, is found in equal abundance in Southern Chili, Tierra 

 del Fuego, and the Falkland Islands, and this may represent 

 one of the primitive forms which has survived through long 

 ages. 



The smallest species in New Zealand V. canescens is a 

 minute creeping plant of a grey rather than a green 

 colour, which grows so close to the soil, which it resembles 

 in colour, that it is almost invisible until its little blue 

 flowers open out. These only expand in strong sunlight, 

 and are as evanescent as those of the imported Speedwell. 

 Between this pigmy, whose leaves do not exceed a tenth of 

 an inch in length, and some of the large shrubby forms, 

 with leaves from four to six inches long and fine racemes 

 of white, bluish, or purple flowers, a great variety of plants 

 is found. Hooker catalogued forty species as occurring in 

 New Zealand ; Armstrong (of Christchurch) recognised 

 seventy ; while Mr Oheeseman, of Auckland, who is the 

 author of the recently published "Manual of the New 

 Zealand Flora," describes eighty-four. But the mere 

 occurrence of such a number and such variety points to 

 a long ancestry, and further shows that they must have 

 been subjected to very varying conditions to attain their 

 present characters. 



