250 Essays. 



shrub, save Coriaria ruseifolia ; and that many of them are sea-side and 

 water plants, identical with those found in G-reat Britain. 



16. Before, however, any comparison is attempted between the botany 

 of New Zealand (North Island) and that of other lands, it will be advan- 

 tageous further to consider such genera and species peculiar to the island — 

 or to the New Zealand group — as are real and well developed, and which, 

 united, form the characteristic New Zealand botany. Not but that a genus 

 may be (and often is) quite as well developed by a single species as by a 

 number — witness that unique New Zealand plant Phylloglossum drwn- 

 mondii, which single species, at present, not only constitutes a genus, 

 but which, by eminent continental botanists, had very nearly been 

 made the type of a new natural order ! A genus, although not endemic, 

 may properly enough be said to be " well-developed " in New Zealand, 

 if better species are found, or if more abundantly met with, here than in 

 other countries ; if, in fact, New Zealand clearly seems to be its centre, 

 its home. Several of our New Zealand genera were created by her 

 first botanical visitors. Banks and Solander, and by Forster aided by 

 Sparrman* ; the younger Linnaeus, De Candolle, and E. Brown also 

 made a few. A. Cunningham increased the number considerably from the 

 Bay of Islands plants ; and more recently. Dr. Hooker has both confirmed 



* Dr. Sparrman seems scarcely to have been done justice to ; no New Zealand plant 

 bears his] name. Gr. Forster, however, in his Yoyage round the World (Vol. I. p. 67, 

 4to. ed.), speaking of his father and himself, while collecting specimens at the Cape, on 

 their voyage out with Captain Coot, says, — " Our abundant harvest gave us the greatest 

 apprehensions that with all our efforts, we alone would be unequal to the task of collecting, 

 describing, drawing, and preserving (all at the same time) si^ch multitudes of species, in 

 countries where every one we gathered would in all probability be a nondescript. It was 

 therefore of the utmost importance, if we meant not to neglect any branch of natural 

 knowledge, to endeavour to find an assistant well qualified to go hand in hand with us in 

 our undertakings. We were fortunate enough to meet with a man of science, Dr. Sparr- 

 man, at this place, who, after stvidying under the father of botany, the great Sir Charles 

 Linne, had made a voyage to China and another to the Cape in pursuit of knowledge. 

 The idea of gathering the treasures of nature in countries hitherto imknown to Europe 

 filled his mind so entirely, that he immediately engaged to accompany us on our circiim- 

 navigation, in the course of which, I am proud to say, we have found him an enthusiast in 

 his science, well versed in medical knowledge, and endowed with a heart capable of the 

 warmest feehngs, and worthy of a philosopher." And the father, J. K. Forster, in the 

 preface to his classic Genera Plantamm (among much laudatory language), also says, — 

 " Sparrmannvis plantas describebat, fihus easdem dehneabat. — Yerum dum Sparrmannus 

 plantas accuratius esaminaret, fihus et ego sape in consilium vocati in commune consule- 

 bamus," &c. It is hoped that future botanical describers and nomenclators of New 

 Zealand plants will remember this. No man can read Gr. Forster's Voyage, or the Observa- 

 tions and botanical works pubhshed by his father, J. B. Forster, without perceiving how 

 much they (we ?) were indebted to Dr. Sparrman, who also did so much at the Cape for 

 the advancement of natural science. His memory has been justly commemorated by 

 Thunberg, in the Soiith African genus Sparrmannia — a genus very closely alhed to the 

 New Zealand JEnielea. 



