XVI FLORA OF NEW ZEALAND. 



These considerations lead us to others still more elusive of the naturalist's grasp. The reference 

 of all varieties to a species, and of its individuals to a single parent, argues the existence at some 

 epoch of a type or form around which all varieties may be grouped. It has been observed that two 

 or more created or induced types or species may resemble one another so closely, that, amid the mul- 

 titude of varieties of each, the naturalist shall seek in vain for that which best demonstrates the 

 species. No one can deny the possibility of such creations, nor perhaps their probability, when he 

 considers the infinite varieties of climates, how insensibly they pass into one another, and how nicely 

 the functions of some plants appear to be adapted to certain modifications of these, and to no others. 

 Had, moreover, every climate its own species, and were there any difficulty in propagating the ma- 

 jority of the plants of one climate in a very different one, such creations would appear to be indis- 

 pensable : but the facts of botanical geography assm-e us, that it is by far the smaller half of the 

 vegetable kingdom that is confined to narrow geographical or climatic areas, and that very few plants 

 indeed are absolutely local ; whilst the operations of the gardener and agriculturist prove, that a vast pro- 

 portion of the plants of the two temperate zones are capable of growing in any moderate climate. I do 

 not think that those who argue for narrow limits to the distribution and variation of species, can have 

 considered a garden in a philosophical spirit, or have weighed such facts as that there have been cul- 

 tivated, within the last seventy years, in the open air of England (at Kew) upwards of twenty thou- 

 sand species of plants from all quarters of the globe, and this within a space that, had it been left to 

 nature, would not have contained two hundred indigenous species ! The fact that an overwhelming 

 proportion of these have come up true to then" parent, and have continued so under every possible 

 disadvantage of transportation and transplantation, of altered seasons,' and amount and distribution 

 of temperature and humidity, of unsuitable soil and exposure, and of the multitude of errors in 

 management which unavoidable ignorance of their natural locality and habit engenders. Such 

 appeal's to me the most forcible argument in favour of the power of plants to retain their original 

 characters under altered circumstances. 



To return, however to the idea of a type, I must remind the New Zealand reader that the word 

 is often used in a vague and unphilosophical manner : in the too frequent sense of the term it de- 

 notes that individual of a species which was first cultivated, described, figured, or collected, or that 

 form which is most abundant in the neighbourhood of the writer ; whereas all the individuals thus 

 referred to may represent anomalous or exceptional states of the true type. The fact is, that we have 

 no clue whatever to the originally created typical form of any plant, consistent with the view of its 

 origin in a single parent, and its powers of varying. If we take a species of universal distribution, 

 a careful examination of all its variations, and a contrast between these and those of its allies, may 

 lead to the detection of a form, which for various reasons may b<* assumed as the real or ideal 

 standard ; for we have no reason to suppose that the whole globe is so altered that the circumstances 

 under which the assumed type originally appeared do not now exist anywhere. But with local 

 plants the case is different ; they may have originated where they are now found, but it is more 

 consistent with geological truths to assume that many did not, and that, however slight the induced 

 changes have been, and however powerless to obhterate specific character, they may still mask the 

 original form. 



Practically, then, the type is a phantom ; what was once the typical state may no longer be the 



spring by altered circumstances have become unisexual, and, what is of more practical importance, upon the possi- 

 bility of the chance transport of one sex of a dioecious plant proving sufficient to effect the propagation of the 

 species. 



