V.— MISCELLANEOUS. 



Art. LIV. — Some Remarks upon the Distribution of the Organic Productions 

 of New Zealand. By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. 

 {Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 15th August, 1883.] 

 In the course of last year's proceedings of this Society I brought under its 

 notice some remarks upon the distribution of the land and wading birds 

 found within the New Zealand zoological sub-region.* Whilst engaged in 

 preparing the paper in which I treated of this subject, I was struck with 

 the fact that the fauna and flora of the main islands of New Zealand pre- 

 sent features very similar to those which so much impressed the late Mr. 

 Darwin in connection with the organic products of the Galipagos Islands. 

 That group, as you are aware, is situated under the equator, within five or 

 six hundred miles from the western coast of America. None of the islands 

 composing it are large, and all consist of volcanic rocks of recent origin. 

 The group was first systematically examined by Mr. Darwin during the 

 visit of the " Beagle " in 1835, and he tells us that, seeing that most of its 

 organic products were aboriginal creations, occurring nowhere else, he felt, 

 in viewing them, that both in space and in time he seemed to be brought 

 somewhat near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first 

 appearance of new beings on this earth. He points out, however, that not- 

 withstanding this dissimilarity, all the organic products of the islands in 

 question showed a marked relationship to those of America, and he con- 

 cluded, therefore, that whilst the group looked almost like a world of itself, 

 it could only be considered as a satellite of the great continent, whence 

 it had evidently derived a few stray colonists, and had received the general 

 character of its indigenous productions. 



But the feature which most impressed him in considering these produc- 

 tions, was, that notwithstanding the general proximity of the several islands 

 to each other, each of them possessed species, both of birds and plants, 

 which were not to be found upon any of the others. As a striking example 

 of this, in the case of the birds, he mentions that each of the three species 

 of mocking-thrush which he found there was peculiar to a particular island 

 or to some particular sub-group of the archipelago, and he adds, that 

 although his attention was not soon enough called to the fact to enable him 

 to determine whether the same rule prevailed in relation to a singular group 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., xv.,Ipp. 178 to 187. 



