834 Transactions. — Botany. 
New Zealand are not—in either country—the plants which give a character 
to the vegetation. When I visited Australia in 1878, I explored about half 
of the colony of Victoria, and a large portion of New South Wales. In 
this extensive tract of country, containing two or three thousand species, I 
only observed about thirty or forty New Zealand plants, and they were by 
no means abundant. The common plants of the two countries are 80 very 
different, that I am foreed to the conclusion that we must look elsewhere 
than Australia for the true relationship of our native flora. The space at 
my disposal here does not permit of any further reference to this very inter- 
esting subject, but I hope to return to it on some future occasion. 
The Naturalized Plants.—No account, however short, of the plants of 
Canterbury would be complete without some reference to those plants which 
have been introduced through the agency of colonization. Wherever settle- 
ment extends the native plants rapidly die out, and their places are filled 
by British and other exotic plants, mostly of a very weedy nature. Indeed, 
the commonest species of plants in the province, at the present time, are 
introduced weeds such as the sorrel, Rumex acetosella, the white clover, 
Trifolium repens, and numerous kinds of British grasses. 
These introduced plants are not all small herbs, shrubs are fairly repre- 
sented, and trees are not altogether wanting. There can, I think, be no 
doubt whatever that the native vegetation will eventually be almost, if not 
entirely, exterminated, and the floral features of the country altogether 
changed through the introduction of these foreign weeds. When we con- 
sider that these plants have nearly all been introduced within the last 
twenty years, it is certainly surprising that they have already become so 
abundant. : 
The rapidity with which these introduced plants have spread over the 
province of Canterbury is indeed an extraordinary circumstance. A list 
of the introduced plants of Canterbury was laid before this Institute by my 
father on the 4th October, 187 1; and I now furnish an additional list, 
making a total of 250 species. Most of the species contained in these two 
lists are common British weeds, very few of them possessing much beauty. 
Along the roadside, throughout the province, may be found abundance 
of such plants as the common knot-weed, Polygonum dryandri. The chick- 
weed, Stellaria media. The shepherd’s purse, Capsella bursa-pastoris. The 
common docks, Rumex obtusifolius and R, erispus. The so-called Cape-weed, 
Hypocheris radicata. The wild stork’s bill, Erodium cireutarium. The May- 
weed, Matricaria chamomilla. The mullem, Verbascum thapsus, and the 
hemlock, Conium maculatum. The most useful members of the introduced 
flora are the grasses, which abound everywhere, number more than forty 
species, and are still increasing in numbers. The common English water- 
