ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 309 



ably shown from his own observation in his Antarctic Flora. The 

 three islands of which New Zealand consists extend from 34 to 

 47 i S. latitude; and as they contain, moreover, snowy mountains 

 of above 8850 English feet elevation, they must include consider- 

 able diversity of climate. The Northern Island has been examined 

 with tolerable completeness from the voyage of Banks and Solander 

 to Lesson and the Brothers Cunningham and Colenso, and yet in 

 more than 70 years we have only become acquainted with less 

 than 700 phaenogamous species. (Dieffenbach, Travels in New 

 Zealand, 1843, vol. i. p. 419.) The paucity of vegetable corresponds 

 to the paucity of animal species. Joseph Hooker, in his Flora 

 Antarctica, pp. 7375, remarks, that " the botany of the densely 

 wooded regions of the southern islands of the New Zealand group 

 and of Fuegia is much more meagre not only than that of similarly 

 clothed regions of Europe, but of islands many degrees nearer to 

 the Northern pole than these are to the Southern one. Iceland, for 

 instance, which is from 8 to 10 degrees farther from the Equator than 

 the Auckland and the Campbell Islands, contains certainly five times 

 as many flowering plants. In the Antarctic Flora, under the in- 

 fluence of a cool and moist, but singularly equable climate, great 

 uniformity, arising from paucity of species, is associated with great 

 luxuriance of vegetation. " This striking uniformity prevails both at 

 different levels (the species found on the plains appearing also on 

 the slopes of the mountains) and over vast extents of country, from 

 the south of Chili to Patagonia and even to Tierra del Fuego, or 

 from lat. 45 to 56. Compare, on the other hand, in the northern 

 temperate region, the Flora of the South of France, in the latitude 

 of the Chonos Archipelago on the coast of Chili, with the Flora of 

 Argyleshire in Scotland, in the latitude of Cape Horn, and how great 

 a difference of species is found; while in the Southern Hemisphere 

 the same types of vegetation pass through many degrees of latitude. 

 Lastly, on Walden Island, in lat. 80| N v or not ten degrees from 

 the North Pole of the earth, ten species of flowering plants have 

 been collected, while in the southernmost islet of the South Shet- 

 lands, though only in lat. 63 S., only a solitary grass was found." 

 These considerations on the distribution of plants confirm the belief 

 that the great mass of still unobserved, uncollected, and undescribed 



