486 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
the means of continually adding to this list. Still the general conclusions 
arrived at in the ‘‘ Flora Nove-Zealandiz”’ have not been materially altered 
by recent discoveries. 
Sir Joseph Hooker was struck by the preponderance of Australian types 
among those plants which he found to be common both to New Zealand 
and other countries of the world. Nearly one-fourth of these plants were 
Australian, nearly one-eighth South American, and one-tenth common to 
both Australia and South America. Of the remainder about one-twelfth 
were shown to be European and one-sixteenth antarctic. When we find | 
similar plants in two widely-separated parts of the globe, we are naturally 
led to consider how they have reached these distant localities, and if no 
satisfactory solution of the question is afforded by an examination of their 
structural means of dispersion, we are further tempted to speculate on the 
former land connections which have existed. The preponderance of Aus- 
tralian plants in New Zealand is not to be accounted for by proximity alone, 
as the wide extent of sea which separates the countries forms the most | 
effectual of all barriers to the migration of the majority of plants. Sir J. 
Hooker points out that no theory of transport of the forms common to the 
two regions will account for the absence of “the Eucalypti and other 
Myrtacee, of the whole immense genus of Acacia, and of its numerous Aus- 
tralian congeners,” or the absence of Casuarina, Callitris, Dilleniacea, ete-, 
and the variety of such large Australian orders as Proteacew, Rutacee, and 
Stylidiee. Nor will any theory of variation account for these facts. And 
he continues: ‘Considering that Eucalypti (Myrtacee) form the most 
prevalent forest feature over the greater part of South and East Australia, 
rivalled by the Leguminose alone, and that both these Orders (the latter 
especially) are admirably adapted constitutionally for transport, and that 
the species are not particularly local or scarce, and grow well wherever | 
sown, the fact of their absence from New Zealand cannot be too strongly 
pressed on the attention of the botanical geographer, for it is the maim 
cause of the difference between the floras of these two great masses of inet 
being much greater than that between any two equally large 
ones on the face of the globe.” Read in the light of our accumu 
knowledge, the following remark is of interest: “ New Zealand, howeve? 
does not appear wholly as a satellite of Australia in all the genera common 
to both, for of several there are but few species in Australia, which hence 
shares the peculiarities of New Zealand rather than New Zealand those of 
Australia.” That is to say, that he saw that those plants which oceur 1 
Ro oS 
