CHAP. XXIX. J NEW ZEALAND. 421 



some of the adjacent islands (the Chatham, Auckland, and 

 Macquarie's), forms a botanical centre. It is sufficently 

 distant from both continents to preserve its botanical pecu- 

 liarities, and it offers in that respect the most striking 

 instance of an acknowledged fact in all branches of natural 

 history, viz. that the different regions of the globe are 

 endowed with peculiar forms of animal and vegetable life. 



The number of species at present known is 632, of which 

 number 314 are dicotyledonous or endogenous plants, and 

 the rest, or 318, monocotyledonous and cellular plants. To 

 what can this remarkable disproportion be due so con- 

 trary from what is the case in other countries? Is it 

 owing to the geological fact that New Zealand is of recent 

 formation, and that in such countries the plants which are 

 regarded as inferior, the cellular and cryptogamous plants, 

 make their appearance before the more developed flowering 

 ones ? Without discussing this difficult question, I merely 

 observe that the visitor to the distant shores of New 

 Zealand will be struck by the scantiness of annual and 

 flowering plants, of which only a very few possess vivid 

 colours, and would attract the attention of the florist. In 

 their place he will find a number of trees and ferns of various 

 descriptions, of which the greater part of the flora consists. 

 But these give at once a distinct character to the vegeta- 

 tion. If the traveller should happen to come from New- 

 South Wales, he cannot but observe either that the glaucous 

 colour of a New South Wales landscape, produced by the 

 Eucalypti, Casuarineae, Acacias, and Banksias of its open 

 forests, which is only relieved in certain alluvial situations 

 by a fresher green, and in certain seasons and localities by 

 a variety of beautiful flowers, has given way in New Zea- 

 land to the glossy green of a dense and mixed forest, or 

 that the landscape, when it is covered with the social fern, 

 has assumed a brown hue. In the former general aspect, 

 together with the tree-ferns, palms, and Dracaenas which 

 abound in New Zealand, that country resembles one situated 

 between the tropics, and especially the beautiful islands of 

 the Pacific. 



