V.—MISCELLANEOUS. 
Art. LIV.—Some Remarks upon the Distribution of the Organic Productions 
of New Zealand. By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 15th August, 1883.] 
In the course of last year’s proceedings of this Society I brought under its 
notice some remarks upon the distribution of the land and wading birds 
found within the New Zealand zoological sub-region.* Whilst engaged in 
preparing the paper in which I treated of this subject, I was struck with 
the fact that the fauna and flora of the main islands of New Zealand pre- 
sent features very similar to those which so much impressed the late Mr. 
Darwin in connection with the organic products of the Galipagos Islands. 
That group, as you are aware, is situated under the equator, within five or 
six hundred miles from the western coast of America. None of the islands 
composing it are large, and all consist of volcanic rocks of recent origin. 
The group was first systematically examined by Mr. Darwin during the 
visit of the ** Beagle” in 1885, and he tells us that, seeing that most of its 
organic products were aboriginal creations, occurring nowhere else, he felt, 
in viewing them, that both in space and in time he seemed to be brought 
somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first 
appearance of new beings on this earth. He points out, however, that not- 
withstanding this dissimilarity, all the organic products of the islands in 
question showed a marked relationship to those of America, and he con- 
cluded, therefore, that whilst the group looked almost like a world of itself, 
it could only be considered as a satellite of the great continent, whence 
it had evidently derived a few stray colonists, and had received the general 
character of its indigenous productions. 
But the feature which most impressed him in-considering these produc- 
tions, was, that notwithstanding the general proximity of the several islands 
to each other, each of them possessed species, both of birds and plants, 
which were not to be found upon any of the others. As a striking example 
of this, in the case of the birds, he mentions that each of the three species 
of mocking-thrush which he found there was peculiar to a particular island 
or to some particular sub-group of the archipelago, and he adds, that 
although his attention was not soon enough called to the fact to enable him 
to determine whether the same rule prevailed in relation to a singular group 
* Trans. N.Z. Inst., xv.,{pp. 178 to 187. 
