86 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 
the third is Australian, Malaysian, and Polynesian in its distri- 
bution, while Libocedrus is found only in New Zealand and South 
America. 
While special adaptations for wind-distribution are apparently 
few in New Zealand plants (if we except the Composite), there are 
no doubt many seeds which are readily blown about by reason of 
their small size and lightness. I have no data to guide me here, 
but will instance the order Ovchidew, all the species of which have 
minute light seeds, and all the genera of which are either 
Australian or from further north, or have an Australian facies. 
(2) The second mode of dispersal mentioned is by means of 
birds, and this is accomplished in three ways—‘‘either by swal- 
lowing fruits and rejecting the seeds in a state fit for germination, 
or by the seeds becoming attached to the plumage of ground- 
nesting birds, or to the feet of aquatic birds embedded in small 
quantities of mud or earth.” With regard to the first of these 
modes, it is probable that the bright colours of most succulent 
fruits serve to render them conspicuous and attractive to birds, 
which are thus led to swallow them. But most seeds, enclosed in 
fleshy pulp, are furnished with a hard shell or test, and most 
fruit-eating birds have a very soft gizzard, incapable of grinding 
up the food which they eat, and so it happens that these birds 
become the unconscious means of distributing plants producing such 
succulent fruits. I find that altogether some 59 genera of plants 
in New Zealand produce succulent fruits, mostly drupaceous—that 
is, having the inner layer of the pericarp hard or stony, so as to 
protect the seeds,—and of these no less than 41 genera are common 
to these islands and Australia, or the tropics of the Old World. 
Only 18 of these genera occur also in America, and their range is 
either very wide, as in the case of Myrtus, Eugenia, Solanum, 
Cassytha, and Astelia, or they are of antarctic distribution, and have 
in most cases invaded Australia and countries to the north, as 
well as New Zealand. Coviaria, Fuchsia, and Callixene are the only 
New Zealand genera with succulent fruits which occur in South 
America, but not in Australia, or any other land to the north of 
New Zealand. When it is remembered that most of our land 
birds are either characteristic of the Australian region, or are 
allied to Australian forms, a certain amount of light is thrown 
upon this subject. It must not however be supposed that the 
possession or the want of succulent fruit is a character of great 
importance or significance; it is probably a very minor character, 
as even in the same species (¢.g., Gaultheria antipoda) we may find 
great differences in the extent to which succulent tissue is 
developed in the pericarp of the fruit. Still it constitutes one of 
those minor coincidences, the sum of which, when taken together, 
throws considerable light on this and kindred questions. | 
Besides swallowing the fruits of plants and rejecting the 
seeds, birds carry seeds attached to their plumage. A few grasses 
may be thus carried by means of their hispid awns, and the seeds 
of some Pittosporums may adhere by their glutinous surface, but 
with these exceptions I only know of two genera which owe their 
means of dispersal to any special contrivance which enables their 
seeds to adhere to passing objects—these are Acena and Uncimia. 
In the former genus, the four angles of the persistent calyx are 
produced into spines, which in the majority of the species bear 
