362 Transactions.— Botany. 
pozoi, it lacks the membranous texture of that rare fern, the fronds are 
crowded, the pinne far less distant; the writer names it provisionally G. 
alpina, as appropriate from its habitat. 
It was collected by Mr. Gray in the Upper Ashburton district. 
Nothochlena distans, Br. 
In the Handbook the habitat of this deciduous fern is not particularized 
further than North Island, on basaltic rocks, on the authority of Colenso. 
The writer has obtained it in abundance on the cliffs and rocks about Port 
Cooper; on the rocks that wall in the creek in Church Bay it is plentiful, 
growing in close proximity to the much admired Cheilanthes, 
Art. LI.—On the Naturalized Plants of Port Nicholson and the adjacent 
District. By T. Kex, F.L.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 12th January, 1878.] 
Onz of the most interesting branches of scientific investigation is the dis- 
placement or replacement of plants and animals which we know is now in 
progress over nearly all parts of the earth's surface. In islands and conti- 
nents where man has not taken up his permanent abode, the process is slow 
but none the less certain ; seeds of plants from other latitudes, wafted by the 
waves, germinate on the shore, and finding a suitable habitat, are gradually 
diffused through the interior; other seeds, or possibly fragments of plants 
themselves, are borne by birds, even by insects, or in some rare cases carried 
by winds; seeds of plants from more distant regions may be accidentally 
thrown overboard from passing ships, or the sailor landing to inter his dead 
shipmate, leaves behind him the northern chickweed, or the broad-leaved 
plantain, which so habitually follows the track of the pioneers of civilization 
that the North Ameriean Indians have poetically termed it the ** footstep of 
the whites.” Itis easy to realize how by these and similar noiseless agencies; 
material changes may be produced in the aspect of the flora of an uninhabited 
country in the course of centuries. But with the advent of man other forces 
acting in the same direction are brought into operation partly by design and 
partly by accident, so-that for a time these changes are accelerated in a 
constantly increasing ratio, and the work of centuries is compressed into a 
decade. The forest is destroyed, the vegetation of the plain is changed, or 
at least so intermixed with exotic plants that its aspect is entirely new. 
Foreign weedy plants spread through the land, destroying by their superior 
_ Vigour much of the original vegetation. In more distant situations sheep and 
cattle feeding closely upon the herbs, or on the tender shoots of shrubs, 
