362 Transactions. — Botany, 



jiozoi, it lacks tlie membranous texture of that rare fern, the fronds are 

 crowded, the pinnse far less distant ; the writer names it~]provisionally G. 

 alpina, as appropriate from its habitat. 



It was collected by Mr. Gray in the Upper A"shburton district. 

 Nothochlcena cUstans, Br. 



In the Handbook the habitat of this deciduous fern is not particularized 

 further than North Island, on basaltic rocks, on the authority of Colenso. 

 The writer has obtained it in abundance on the cliffs and rocks about Port 

 Cooper ; on the rocks that wall in the creek in Church Bay it is plentiful, 

 growing in close proximity to the much admired Cheilanthes. 



Art. LI. — On the Xatiiralized Plants of Port Nicholson and the adjacent 

 District. By T. Kirk, F.L.S. 

 [Read before the Wellington PMlosopMcal Society, 12th January, 1878.] 

 One of the most interesting branches of scientific investigation is the dis- 

 placement or replacement of plants and animals which we know is now in 

 progress over nearly all parts of the earth's surface. In islands and conti- 

 nents where man has not taken up his permanent abode, the process is slow 

 but none the less certain ; seeds of plants from other latitudes, wafted by the 

 waves, germinate on the shore, and finding a suitable habitat, are gradually 

 diffused through the hiterior ; other seeds, or possibly fi'agments of plants 

 themselves, are borne by birds, even by insects, or in some rare cases carried 

 by winds ; seeds of plants from more distant regions may be accidentally 

 thrown overboard from passing ships, or the sailor landing to inter his dead 

 shipmate, leaves behind him the northern chickweed, or the broad-leaved 

 plantain, which so habitually follows the track of the pioneers cf civihzation 

 that the North American Indians have poetically termed it the " footstep of 

 the whites." It is easy to realize how by these and similar noiseless agencies, 

 material changes may be produced in the aspect of the flora of an uninhabited 

 country in the course of centuries. But with the advent of man other forces 

 acting in the same direction are brought into operation partly by design and 

 partly by accident, so that for a time these changes are accelerated in a 

 constantly increasing ratio, and the work of centuries is compressed into a 

 decade. The forest is destroyed, the vegetation of the plain is changed, or 

 at least so intermixed with exotic plants that its aspect is enthely new. 

 Foreign weedy plants spread through the land, destroying by then' superior 

 vigour much of the original vegetation. In more distant situations sheep and 

 cattle feeding closely upon the herbs, or on the tender shoots of shrubs, 



