CupullfercB.'] FLORA OF TASMANIA. 
This curious little genus consists of a very few South African, Abyssinian, Australian, nn.l New Zealand plants 
The Tasmanian A. pusilla is a small, loosely tufted, deep green, membranous herb, growing in shady places, with 
slender, prostrate, creeping, slender stems, 3-6 inches long, pubescent with reflezed hairs L-arcx petiohd, about 
£ inch broad, rounded or rounded-ovate, with a few broad blunt crenatures. ]!„!,■ flom-rs terminating short 
decurved axillary peduncles, usually solitary, consisting of a minute, broad, shallow, concave, pilose, bilnbed p, ri- 
anth, containing a comparatively loni: stanieii. /' •, .■.■ ■■ - •' r,-,-* minute, axillarv, ver\ shorth pedieelled, consisting 
of an extremely compressed elliptic perianth, with a linear-oblong hrael at its base, minute mouth, and ciliated 
margins. Pistil stipitate, its style ami stigma exserted. The New Zealand ./. \ur,r-/r/,i/iJur. which I had dis- 
tinguished by its smaller bract to the female flower (which is sometimes bract h-vO, is, 1 am now disposed to think. 
only a variety of A. pusilla. (Name from baring been discovered in Australia.) 
1. Australina pusilla (Gaud. Bat Toy. Uran. 805, tA in Yov. Bonite, t. cxir. \ ; pusilla, cauh- 
bus retrorsum puberulis, foliis minimis rotundato-ovatis grosse crcnatis, perianthio niasc. bilobo; ll. ! 
bracteola oblonga lineari.— Wed Ml in Ann. Sc. Not. ter. I. i. 212. A. Tasmi 
Zeal. i. 226. A. Novae-Zelandia?, Nob. in Ft. V. Zeal. i. i:U\. Urtica pusilla. 
{Gunn, 887.) 
Hab. Circular Head and banks of the Acheron, Omm. — (FL Dec.) 
Distrib. South-eastern Australia and New Zealand. 
Nat. Ord. LXXIV. OUFULIFEILE. 
The total absence of any of the prevalent genera of tins ( feck r, except Fmpu, in tin u 
of the Southern hemisphere, is in some respects a remarkable nnomaU m geographn al 
there are few or no Natural Families of equal extent in number of genera and species, and thai range ;i> 
this does from the subarctic regions to the level of the sea under the Kquator, ihat are not continued into 
the south temperate continents. The range of the only very large genus of the Order, Querent, has been 
only recently approximately known, and its extension in great abundance into the hot humid regions of 
the Malayan Peninsula and Archipelago demonstrated. It however scarcely crosses the Equator in the 
Old World, nor does it in the American continent, where it is no less abundant in the northern tropics, but 
there almost exclusively inhabits the cooler mountainous regions of the Cordillera. In Airica, again, the 
Cupulifera are found nowhere south of Algeria, where they are rare. 
Under these circumstances, the reappearance of the northern genus Fagus in the mountains of South 
Chili and Fuegia, New Zealand and Tasmania, and not in the Cordillera of Peru, the Australian Alps, or 
anywhere within 40° of the Equator, either in the north or south hemispheres, is an extraordinary fact. 
Again, the close similarity between the Beeches of the southern hemisphere, their marked dissimilarity from 
those of the northern hemisphere, their being confined to the alpine or colder regions of the three most 
southern masses of land in the globe, are amongst the strongest proofs of there being a closer botanical 
relationship between these lands than those to the northward of them : 
Fagus Cnnnitightunii, Hook., is strictly the representative of the F. 1/ 
Alps, and of F. betuloides, Mirb., of Fuegia; whilst the deciduous-lea' like manner 
the representative of F. Antarctica of Fuegia, but has no analogue in New Zealand ; tor it is i 
that whereas deciduous-leaved Beeches are the most alpine trees in Fuegia and Tasmania (as shrubs how- 
ever), and advance furthest towards the South Polar regions of all arboreous vegetation, to Cape Horn, in 
lat. 56° S., nothing of the sort is found in New Zealand or the islands to the south of that Arcbip lago. 
It is in the investigation of such facts that we seek a clue to guide us to a knowledge of the great problem 
of the distribution of southern plants. 
VOL. I. 
