

TTt i^- r i'T r m YYi i m f n l i rnr 



INTRODUCTORY. 



JEW ZEALAND has been called "The Land of Ferns," and this not without 

 reason, as there are probably a greater number and variety of these plants 

 within its limits than are to be found in any other country of equal area. 

 This no doubt arises from its being situated in the latitude of the westerly 

 winds of the southern hemisphere, which reach its shores charged with the 

 moisture that they have imbibed as trade-winds in the tropics, and which 

 they discharge on arriving at the mountain ranges of the Colony : thus 

 giving it a humid climate, highly favourable to vegetation. The great 

 length of the colony (nearly goo miles) in proportion to its width, and the 

 height of its mountains, give it a very wide range of temperature from a 

 semi-tropical climate at the sea level, near the North Cape, to the perpetual 

 snow of the Southern Alps. From this cause the Colony contains plants of 

 classes varying from tropical to arftic to a very unusual extent. Much 

 of its vegetation, too, and particularly its palms and tree ferns, indicate 

 that New Zealand had formerly a warmer temperature than at present, and a tropical 

 flora, of which these are a lingering remnant, which has gradually become acclimatised. 

 To anyone interested in botany, it seems very wonderful to find such plants growing 

 .within a short distance of edelweiss and gentians allied to those of the European Alps, 

 and of other forms whose natural habitat should apparently be Norway and Sweden, or 

 even farther north. The great range of the geological formations of the Colony, too, by 

 producing an immense variety of soils, is also highly conducive to a variety of veo-e- 

 tation, the extensive volcanic formations, in particular, giving rise to a class of earths 

 strange to most Europeans, and a corresponding flora. 



