GEOGRAPHICAL BOTANY. 



Colenso's Botanical Diary of his travels during sever r 

 months through the little known interior of the norther,, 

 islands of New Zealand (Lond. Journ. Bot. 1844, pp. 4 

 62) contains numerous localities of, and reports upon,\ 

 newly-discovered plants which have not yet been made\ 

 public, but will be described in Dr. Hooker's illustrated 

 work. 



The first three parts of the latter work have appeared ; 

 they contain a general introduction upon the botanical 

 characters of high latitudes of the southern hemisphere, 

 and also the commencement of a flora of the Auckland 

 Archipelago (The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of 

 H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror, under the 

 command of Sir J. Ross ; by Jos. Dalt. Hooker. Parts 

 i-iii, London, 1844, 4to.) Being, during the summer, 

 almost always either in high barren latitudes, or on the 

 open sea, Hooker had but little opportunity of collecting 

 other than such plants of the antarctic flora as flowered 

 in the winter or spring. But he considers this defect, 

 which concerns the copiousness of the materials which he 

 collected, as of little consequence, as he was in the favo- 

 rable position of being able to make use of the botanical 

 results obtained in all the earlier British voyages to the 

 South Pole, but of still less, in consequence of a climatal 

 peculiarity which he developes in the introduction, and 

 regards as the most characteristic feature of the antarctic 

 vegetation. He was surprised on finding at Kerguelen's 

 Land, the same plants in flower which Cook had met 

 with at other seasons, and this result he subsequently 

 found to occur generally. The vast preponderance of 

 water in the high southern latitudes produces an uni- 

 formity in the distribution of heat throughout the year, 

 and the more we approach the pole the more distinctly 

 does this appear to increase. The seasons there are not 

 distinguished, as in the north, by their temperature, but by 

 scarcely anything more than the variation in the amount 

 of light ; all the months are cold, but the thermometer 

 varies, as in the tropics, within narrow limits. In the 



