128 The Vegetable Sheep of New Zealand. 



THE VEGETABLE SHEEP OF NEW" ZEALAND. 



BY JOHN E. JACKSON. 



Curator of the Museum, Royal Gardens, Kew. 



(With a Coloured Plate.) 



It may, perhaps, be thought from our heading that we are 

 about to note the discovery of a new phenomenon in the 

 animal kingdom ; on the contrary, the sheep of which we are 

 about to speak is a true plant, and belongs to the same family 

 as our common daisy. This family — the Composites — is one 01 

 the most extensive and widely diffused in the whole vegetable 

 kingdom. It numbers some 1,000 species, and no part ot 

 the globe is without some of its representatives. Lindley says 

 that the Composite order alone comprehends at the present 

 day more species than Linnaeus knew as belonging to the 

 whole vegetable kingdom. In so large an order, with such a 

 wide geographical distribution, we might be naturally led to 

 expect a great variety of forms, which indeed there are, for 

 while the bulk of the Composites with us are small annuals, in 

 other countries they are frequently seen as shrubs, or even 

 trees. These arborescent forms seem to increase as we 

 approach the equator. Most of the Composites in the island 

 of St. Helena attain to a large size. The Tasmanian Dogwood, 

 Bedfordia salicina, Dec, grows to a height of twenty-five feet, 

 and furnishes a very hard word. The musk wood, also, Eurybia 

 argophylla, Cass., is a tree about thirty feet high, and abundant 

 throughout the island in damp localities. This latter tree is a 

 near ally to our common aster, or Michaelmas Daisy. Though 

 so variable in form and general appearance, the minute struc- 

 ture of the Composites are particularly alike, so that an observer 

 cannot fail to recognize the affinities of the various plants. 

 New Zealand is the head- quarters of the most singular forms of 

 Composite ; such forms, indeed, as are there found would at 

 first puzzle many to determine what they were, or even, indeed, 

 if they were a vegetable at all. 



Peculiar-looking patches are to be seen upon the sides and 

 tops of the mountains, which in the distance look like so many 

 sheep, and even upon nearing them, their shaggy appearance 

 help rather to confirm the first impression than to dispel* such 

 a notion. Upon a somewhat closer examination, however, we 

 should possibly be ready to believe that these hemispherical 

 masses are those of a gigantic moss. These tufts are, in 

 reality, masses of plants belonging to the genus Raoidia, one 

 species of which is known to the New Zealand settlers as the 



