SIGHT-SEEING IN NEW ZEALAND/ 



Whoever would see countries very much different from his 

 own must make up his mind to cross the oceans. He who says : 

 " I will see my own country first before I go out exploring foreign 

 lands," will never know much by personal observation of the 

 strange varieties of people and culture, or of the wonderful 

 differences in the vegetable and animal developments that make 

 this world of ours so diversified and interesting. The oceans are 

 the great barriers to all interchanges, whether of races or man- 

 ners or productions. Even cultivated and commercial nations, 

 on opposite sides of the Atlantic, are widely dissimilar, as every 

 one knows who has ever traveled in Europe. But in respect of 

 natural growths and native species, which are more restricted in 

 their spheres, there is always a far wider difference. 



Countries divided off from all others by a great expanse of 

 waters, will most likely bear no close relation to them in their 

 stages of advancement. They will probably resemble some by- 

 gone period in the growth of those more connected. And the 

 more isolated a region is, the more backward seems to be its state 

 of development. Thus eastern Australia, separated from all the 

 rest of the world not more by its oceans than by the parched 

 and barren wastes of its interior, had developed, when first visited 

 by white men, only types of animals and plants that were preva- 

 lent in the northern continents during the earlier Tertiary times ; 

 such as reptiles and mursupials, the wingless emus and sluggish 

 parrots, the great tree-ferns, the cycad palms, the araucarian 

 pines and monstrous gum-trees. 



*A Lecture written in 1884, and delivered before the Central Church Society 

 of Rochester, and other Societies. 



