74 • THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



Manual of the New Zealand Flora. By T. F. Cheeseman, F.L.S., 



F.Z.S., Curator of the Auckland Museum. Published under 

 the Authority of the Government of New Zealand. Welling- 

 ton: Mackay. 8vo, cl., pp. xxxvi, 1199. 



In this well-printed volume of more than two thousand pages Mr. 

 Cheeseman has given a complete compendium and account of the 

 flora of New Zealand, so far as phanerogams, ferns, and fern-allies 

 are concerned. It is, as he reminds us, forty-two years since Sir 

 Joseph Hooker published the first part of his Handbook, and since 

 then considerably over a thousand species have been added to the 

 flora. It was hoped that Mr. Thomas Kirk, who had for many 

 years been preparing a hand-book, would have carried his work to 

 completion, but at his death barely two-fifths of this were ready for 

 the press ; and his Students' Flora of New Zealand, issued by the 

 Government towards the end of 1897 and noticed in this Journal 

 for 1898, included only the Polypetalfe and part of the Monopetalae. 



It was fortunate for the Colony that it had at its disposal, in the 

 person of Mr. T. F. Cheeseman, a botanist competent to take 

 Kirk's place and to carry out the work which he had undertaken. 

 Mr. Cheeseman's researches into the flora began in 1870, and have 

 been carried on continuously up to the present time ; and his puo- 

 lished papers have given ample evidence of his capability for the 

 task he has now completed. He has wisely confined it to indige- 

 nous plants, thus departing from the plan of Kirk, who included 

 descriptions of the very numerous more or less naturalized introduc- 

 tions, of which a list is here given in the Appendix. The descrip- 

 tions, which are evidently drawn up from personal observation, 

 strike us as extremely good — of sufficient length to be of service to 

 the intelligent observer, couched in well-chosen terms, and accom- 

 panied by a full and careful synonymy so far as it concerns the 

 literature of New Zealand botany. I am glad to see that the 

 practice of Kirk in printing the until then unpublished names m 

 the transcript of Solander's MS. Flora supplied by the Trustees of 

 the British Museum has not been followed ; it is to be regretted 

 that they should have so far got into print. A considerable number 

 of the Banks and Solander names had however been cited by Si* 

 Joseph Hooker in his Flora of New Zealand, with references to the 

 Banksian figures and MSS. ; these are entirely omitted from the 

 Index Kewensis, which is the more remarkable in that they appear 

 not only in the body of the Flora, but also in the index thereto. 



The notes upon various critical species show a wide acquaint- 

 ance with plants, as well as with botanical literature ; and a number 

 of new species are described. I note that Irophis opaca of 

 Banks and Solander, a plant referred to Paratrophis heterophylh as 

 a variety by Kirk in this Journal for 1897 (p. 222), is raised to the 

 rank of a species under the name P. Banksii ; the oldest specify 

 name should however have been preserved. It is of course only in 

 the field that the real value of a book of this kind can be properly 

 estimated, but there is reason to believe Mr. Cheeseman's Mam" 

 will stand this test. Since the book came to hand, I have been 

 engaged in writing up the collections of Banks and Solander m 



