500 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
development altogether. Wherever flowering plants did originate, it was 
most probably not in New Zealand; and all the information we possess on 
the subject leads to the conclusion that the parent forms of our flora were 
introduced from other lands during a long succession of ages, and that the 
process is still going on. 
As has been already stated, there are about 1085 species of flowering 
plants known to occur in these islands, and of this number about 800 are 
endemic, that is, confined to this region. The relative numbers given in 
Hooker’s “Flora Nove-Zealandie” are 730 and 507, but the additions 
during the last thirty years have chiefly been of endemic forms. These 
species have been developed by the peculiar conditions to which the parent 
forms have been subjected during long periods of isolation. What these 
conditions have actually been we do not know, but in the majority of cases 
the changes brought about have only been of specific value. Even where 
they amount to generic importance the affinities can in nearly every case be 
traced, and we can form an approximately correct opinion as to the relation- 
ships indicated. | 
The greatest proportion of these endemic species is of distinctly Austra- 
lian origin; there are also a number showing Polynesian affinities, and | 
many of antarctic relationship. The remarks therefore which apply to the 
plants common to New Zealand and the regions specified, will apply to the 
originals from whence our endemic species have sprung. In accounting 
extensions, which served to widen the area of New Zealand as it existed in 
olden times, and to bring it into closer proximity with other countries. 
From the antarctic circle a constant succession of south-westerly and 
southerly winds and currents may have served from time to time to convey 
seeds, and birds carrying seeds in their crops and attached to their feet, 
etc. ; while icebergs may have aided in carrying masses of earth, spores, 
and seeds of certain antarctic species of plants. The antarctic continent, of 
which the now existing portions are probably only fragments, had in all likeli- 
hood alternations of climate such as we know to have existed at its antipodes, 
and during some of its warmer epochs it would be invaded by plants from 
South America. mM, ld tk 1 p 7 d th sega : : 
thence to be distributed radially to the countries lying north, as the elim 
_ 4ealand, but it is by this means that South American forms were 
now for the species which are common to New Zealand and other parts of | 
the world, we may notice first, that there is no absolute need on the part of 
the botanist, as there is on the part of the zoologist, to assume the existence 4 
in long past ages of former land connections with countries lying round | 
about. But we have now reason to believe that there were former land 
. 
oak be ware : 
