120 PLANT GEOGRAPHY 



ing part of the " Australasian festoon," and built up of 

 rocks of every geological period from Archaean to 

 Pleistocene, this group of islands is clearly " con- 

 tinental " in origin. With a large proportion of the 

 South Island occupied by Archaean schists, and a large 

 proportion of the North Island covered by modern 

 pumice and other volcanic rocks ; with low sandy shores, 

 and mountain-ranges rising far above a snow-line of 

 about 3000 feet; with glaciers and boiling springs; there 

 is almost every variety in edaphic conditions. Ex- 

 tending through thirteen degrees of latitude (34 47 S.), 

 the islands are, however, so narrow as to have a dis- 

 tinctly " insular " climate, although the rainfall is not 

 high. Hard frosts are, in general, absent. The resultant 

 flora is largely arborescent and evergreen, mesotherm, 

 frigofuge, and hygrophilous, recalling the Temperate 

 Rainforest of Southern Chile. Annual species and bulbs 

 are very few in number. In dry situations a " scrub " 

 occurs, composed largely of species of Coprosma and 

 recalling the " maquis " of Southern Europe; and the 

 development of sub-alpine xerophytes such as the cupres- 

 soid Veronicas and the hoary Mountain Daisies (Celmisia) 

 is very striking. More general, however, even in the 

 southernmost Stewart Island, is the forest. Ferns of all 

 sizes abound. There are 138 species, from the arbores- 

 cent Cyathea and Dicksonia to the delicate Hymeno- 

 phyllum, of which there are twenty species. There are 

 numerous epiphytes, and lianes, such as the " Bush 

 lawyers " (Rubus), are also many, as in Chile. The 

 flat-leaved Conifers (Libocedrus, Podocarpus, etc.), with 

 the Papuan genus Agathis, belong mainly to the north, 

 the Beeches to the south; but the latter are absent from 

 Stewart Island. 



The flora, comprising as it does about 1400 Phanero- 

 gams, is not rich in species ; but no less than two-thirds of 

 these are endemic. Of the remaining third the majority 

 are common to Australia, indicating a common, if remote, 

 origin for the two floras, though some forms with pappus- 

 crowned fruits, such as Olearia and Senecio, may have 

 been derived directly from Australia in comparatively 

 recent times. On the other hand, 90 per cent, of the 

 forest flora is stated to be of Melanesian affinities, a 

 relationship interestingly exemplified in the distribution 

 of the genus Agathis, and of the Nikau, the southernmost 



