II.— BOTANY. 
——— 
Art. XXIV.—On the Flowering Plants of Stewart Island. 
By T. Kmx, F.L.8. 
[Read before the Southland Insti tute, 9th December, 1884.] 
Unrm within the last five or six years botanists have been almost entirely 
ignorant of ihe flora of Stewart Island, our knowledge being restrieted to 
about a dozen flowering plants and a similar number of mosses and Hepatice 
collected by Dr. Lyall in 1848-49, recorded in the Handbook of the New 
Zealand Flora. Of late years, however, this reproach has been removed by 
the labours of several collectors whose work may be briefly mentioned. 
Mr. Charles Traill has done a large amount of good work in the investiga- 
tion of the flora and fauna of the island: I am specially indebted to him for 
dried specimens of about 200 species of flowering plants and ferns, accom- 
panied in many cases by valuable notes on their habits and distribution, as 
well as the native names in use on Stewart Island. Mr. and Mrs. A. W. 
Traill have most kindly formed for me a copious collection of the plants of 
Ruapuke Island, numbering about 140 species, several of which have not 
been observed on Stewart Island proper. Mr. W. Pearson, Commissioner 
of Crown Lands, has laid me under obligations for numerous dried plants 
collected in out-of-the-way places during several visits to the island. 
In 1870 Professor Black, of the Otago University, visited the island, on 
the part of the Otago Provincial Government, for the purpose of investigat- 
ing its natural productions, but no plants of special interest were obtained. 
Mr. G. M. Thomson has, I believe, paid several visits to Stewart Island, 
during which he collected the new species of Brachycome, to which his name 
is attached, and Myrsine chathamica, previously known on the Chatham 
Islands only ; he also collected between thirty and forty species of ferns, with 
other plants of interest. In 1880 he was accompanied by Mr. D. Petrie, 
who read a valuable paper on the flora of Stewart Island before the Otago 
Institute, and gave a catalogue of 200 flowering plants observed by h 
this being the first published account of the plants of the island.’ * Au 
this expedition Actinotus bellidioides and Liparophyllum gunnii 1 
to the New Zealand flora, a matter of great interest, as previously 
only known as indigenous to Tasmania, where they are n xtrem 
‘Trane N. Z. Inst., vol, xiii xiii., p. 323. 
