122 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



forest region between the Ucayale, the Rio de la Madera, 

 and the Tocantin (three great tributaries of the Amazons), 

 and with those of Paraguay and the Provincia de los Mis- 

 siones. In Africa, except in respect to the coasts, we know 

 nothing of the vegetation from 15 north to 20 south lati- 

 tude ; in Asia we are unacquainted with the Floras of the 

 south and south-east of Arabia, where the highlands rise to 

 about 6400 English feet above the level of- the sea, of the 

 countries between the Thian-schan, the Kuenliin, and the 

 Himalaya, all the west part of China, and the greater part of 

 the countries beyond the Ganges. Still more unknown to 

 the botanist are the interior of Borneo, New Guinea, 

 and part of Australia. Farther to the south the number 

 of species undergoes a wonderful diminution, as Joseph 

 Hooker has well and ably shewn from his own observation in 

 his Antarctic Mora. The three islands of which New Zealand 

 consists extend from 34|- to 47J- S. latitude, and as they 

 contain, moreover, snowy mountains of above 8850 English 

 feet elevation, they must include considerable diversity of 

 climate. The Northern Island has been examined with 

 tolerable completeness from the voyage of Banks and So- 

 lander to Lesson and the Brothers Cunningham and Colenso, 

 and yet in more than 70 years we have only become ac- 

 quainted with less than 700 phsenogamous species. (Dief- 

 fenbach, Travels in New Zealand, 1843, vol. i. p. 419.) 

 The paucity of vegetable corresponds to the paucity of 

 animal species. Joseph Hooker, in his Flora Antarctica, 

 p. 73-75, remarks that "the botany of the densely wooded 

 regions of the Southern Islands of the New Zealand group 



