Fauna and Flora of New Zealand. 437 
land-surface during the whole of the Tertiary and Cretaceous 
periods, and perhaps it may date back to Triassic times. 
The oscillations of land were on a much smaller scale in 
Australia than in South America, but they were somewhat 
similar. During the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous periods 
both seem to have undergone subsidence ; but while in South 
America elevation commenced in the Upper Cretaceous, in 
Australia it did not commence until the Hocene. This there- 
fore agrees with, or at any rate in no way contradicts, the 
conclusion already arrived at, that the South-Pacific continent 
existed in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods; but New 
Guinea, perhaps, was not connected until the Lower Cre- 
taceous. 
In the Pacific area itself all we know is that a sedimentary 
rock containing fossils occurs in the centre of Levuka, one of 
the Fiji Islands; and, according to Mr. Tenison-Woods, the 
fossils are of Tertiary, possibly early Tertiary, age, and show 
a tropical climate*, This is interesting to us as indicating 
that the South-Pacifie continent was broken up in early 
Tertiary times. 
Having thus got some idea of what has probably been 
going on in the South Pacific, we will now turn our attention 
to our own country, New Zealand. Sir Joseph Hooker, in 
the well-known introduction to his ‘ Flora Nove Zealandiz,’ 
published in 1853, divides our flora into five elements :—(1) 
Australian, (2) 8. American, (3) North Temperate, (4) Ant- 
arctic, and (5) Polynesian; and he thinks that a land com- 
munication, not necessarily continuous, is required to account 
for the presence of each of these elements, although the diffe- 
rent communications may not have been at the same epoch. 
I do not mean on the present occasion to touch the North 
Temperate and Antarctic elements further than to show that, 
on the whole, they are of later origin than the other three, all 
of which, with few exceptions, are more or less subtropical 
in character. In my remarks [ shall take all my data from 
Hooker’s ‘ Handbook to the Flora of New Zealand’ (1867), 
because, although many new species have been added since 
its publication, almost all are endemic and belong to genera 
already known from New Zealand ; and as they are divided 
in nearly equal proportions between the Australian, South- 
American, and North Temperate elements, with a few Ant- 
arctic forms, their omission will not change in any appreciable 
degree the relative proportions of the flora of the ‘ Handbook.’ 
* Proc. Linn. Soe. of N. S. Wales, vol. iv. p. 358, 
