FAUNA AND FLORA OF NEW ZEALAND. If 
The oscillations of land were on a much smaller scale in 
stralia than in South America, but they were somewhat 
s. ilar. During the jurassic and lower cretaceous periods both 
seem to have undergone subsidence, but while in South America 
elevation commenced in the upper cretaceous, in Australia it did 
not commence until the eocene. This therefore agrees with, or 
at any rate in no way contradicts, the conclusion already arrived 
at, that the South Pacific Continent existed in the jurassic and 
cretaceous periods ; but New Guinea, perhaps, was not connected 
until the lower cretaceous, 
In the Pacific area itself all we know is that a sedimentary 
rock containing fossils occurs in the centre of Levuka, one of the 
Fiji Islands ; and, according to Mr. Tenison-Woods, the fossils 
are of tertiary, possibly early tertiary, age, and show a tropical 
climate.* This is interesting to us as indicating that the South 
Pacific continent was broken up in early tertiary times. 
Having thus got some idea of what has probably been going 
on in the South Pacific, we will now turn our attention to our 
own country, New Zealand. Sir Joseph Hooker, in the well- 
known introduction to his “Flora Nove Zealandiz,” published 
in 1853, divides our flora into five elements: (1) Australian ; 
eeeewec metican ; (3) North Temperate; (4), Antarctic; and 
(5) Polynesian ; and he thinks that a land communication, not 
necessarily continuous, is required to account for the presence of 
each of these elements, although the different communications 
may not have been at the same epoch. I do not mean on the 
present occasion to touch the North Temperate and Antarctic 
elements further than to show that, on the whole, they are of 
later origin than the other three, all of which, with few excep- 
tions, are more or less sub-tropical in character. In my remarks 
I shall take all my data from Hooker’s “ Handbook to the 
Flora of New Zealand” (1867), because, although many new 
species have been added since its publication, almost all are en- 
demic and belong to genera already known from New Zealand ; 
and as they are divided in nearly equal proportions between the 
Australian, South American, and North Temperate elements, 
with a few Antarctic forms, their omission will not change in 
any appreciable degree the relative proportions of the flora of 
the “ Handbook.” Indeed, as Mr. G. M. Thomson has pointed 
out in his interesting address to the Otago Institute last year, 
“the general conclusions arrived at in the ‘Flora Nove Zea- 
landiz’ have not been materially altered by recent discoveries.’} 
For the local distribution of Australian plants, I have Baron 
von Miiller’s valuable “ Systematic Census” (1882). 
There are in New Zealand 35 sub-tropical, or warm tem- 
perate genera of flowering plants, which are also found in South 
America, and which probably did not pass from one country to 
* Pro, Linn, Soc, of N. S, Waies, vol. iv., p. 358. 
+ Trans, N. Z. Institute, vol. xiv., p. 486. 
