494 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
Australia and countries to the north as well as New Zealand. Coriaria, 
Fuchsia, and Callixene are the only New Zealand genera with succulent 
fruits which occur in South America, but not in Australia, or any other 
land to the north of New Zealand. When it is remembered that most of our 
land birds are either characteristic of the Australian region or are allied to 
Australian forms, a certain amount of light is thrown upon this subject. It 
must not, however, be supposed that the possession or the want of succulent 
fruit is a character of great importance or significance ; it is probably a very 
minor character, as even in the same species (e.g., Gaultheria antipoda) we 
may find great differences in the extent to which succulent tissue is 
developed in the pericarp of the fruit. Still it constitutes one of those 
minor cvincidences, the sum of which, when taken together, throws con- 
siderable light on this and kindred questions. 
Besides swallowing the fruits of plants and rejecting the seeds, birds 
earry seeds attached to their plumage. A few grasses may be thus carried 
by means of their hispid awns, and the seeds of some Pittosporums may 
adhere by their glutinous surface, but with these exceptions I only know of 
two genera which owe their means of dispersal to any special contrivance 
which enables their seeds to adhere to passing objects ; these are Acenaand 
Uncinia. In the former genus, the four angles of the persistent calyx are 
produced into spines, which in the majority of the species bear small barbs 
at their apex, and the fruit thus adheres very readily ; the genus is confined 
to the southern hemisphere, except in America, where it has spread as far 
as Mexico and California, and in Polynesia as far as the Sandwich Islands. 
The occurrence of the barb is a very peculiar feature in the New Zealand 
species. The common piripiri (A. sanguisorbe) is a native of Australia, 
Tasmania, and Tristan d’Acunha, as well as New Zealand, and the calys- 
spines are always barbed. A. adscendens, another barbed species, occurs also 
in Fuegia and the Falkland Islands, while 4. nove-zealandia, a third barbed 
species, though endemic, is altogether too near A. sanguisorbe to rank as a2 
exception. The other four species are also endemic, and of these 4. depress4 
bears barbs, while the other three, A. microphylla, buchanani, and inermis, are 
almost entirely without them. The barbs, while no doubt of use in adher- 
ing to the feathers of birds, are best fitted to stick to the hair and skin of 
passing animals, and I think that in these smooth-spined Acenas we have a 
ease of loss of an organ through disuse. = 
The other specially furnished genus is Uncinia, sedges which eee 
pore ke in the southern hemisphere, but range as for north as the = 
