252 Essays. 
Weinmannia, 2 species Areca sapida 
Ligusticum and Angelica, 16 species Arundo conspicua 
anax, lO species Cyathea, 4 species 
Olearia, 20 species Dicksonia, 3 species 
18. Those genera principally belong to the south temperate zone, where 
their habitat is mostly insular, and not unfrequently of the same meridionals 
with the New Zealand group. This is in strict accordance with what might 
have been expected—that from Norfolk Island in the north down to the 
Antaretie Islands in the south, including the Chatham Islands, the same 
genera would be found ; and, in many instances, there are not only the same 
genera to be met with, but the same species. Moreover, it should not be 
forgotten that the majority of those genera are very small, some having only 
two species each (as Alectryon, Dysoxylum, Knightia, and Rhipogonum), 
others only three or four (as Hymenanthera, Pennantia, Clianthus, Ed- 
wardsia, Atherosperma, Dammara, and Phyllocladus), and these are only 
found as single species in their various habitats; and of others, containing 
from five to ten species each (as Plagianthus, Aristotelia, Forstera, Ourisia, 
Cordyline, Astelia, Podocarpus, and Dacrydium), the greater number of species 
of each genus are to be found in New Zealand; so that New Zealand (the 
North Island) may not inaptly be deemed their centre or home. 
Further still—in the midst of much apparent dissimilarity, which, however, 
is daily lessening—there is a very great concord or botanical affinity between 
the vegetation of the various islands lying in or about the same parallels of 
south latitude. A belt around the globe, containing the Chatham Islands, 
Juan Fernandez, south Chili, the Fuegian and Falkland groups, Tristan 
d’Acunha, the Cape, Kerguelen’s Land, St. Paul’s Island, Tasmania, the 
south-east coast of Australia, Lord Howe’s Island, the Middleton group, 
and Norfolk Island, all contain the same genera, and in not a few instances 
(particularly in the smaller islands) the very same species, And this will 
be much more evident when the whole of the botany (i.e. including the 
numerous smaller Cryptogams,—Musci, Hepatice, Algae, Fungi,and Lichenes) 
of those countries is collectively considered ; particularly of those, however 
distant from each other, which partake of the same isothermal and humid 
climate. If, instead of writing on the botanical geography of the Northern 
Island alone of the New Zealand group, I were writing on that of the whole 
group, and at the same time possessed that necessary intimate botanico-geo- 
graphical and geognostical knowledge of the interior of the Southern and 
Stewart Islands which I possess of the Northern Island, I should be in a far 
better position for comparing the botanical geography of New Zealand with 
that of other lands lying within or near the same parallels of south latitude 
than I now am; and, from what I already know, I believe that hereafter, and 
only in some such way, can the botanical geography of the New Zealand 
se 
