MEETINGS OF SOCIETIES. 89 
outside of New Zealand, and are most probably of foreign origin, 
their weapons of defence having been developed in countries 
where they were of service, and the New Zealand immigrants not 
having had sufficient time to lose them. Thus Discavia toumatou 
has its branches and branchlets reduced to spines, but the genus 
is wide-spread in the southern hemisphere, and our species is 
almost identical with an Australian one. So strong a case cannot 
be made out with regard to Aciphylla, or spear-grass, whose leaves 
and bracts are all spinous, and constitute a most powerful means 
of defence. The genus is certainly found in Australia, but the 
spines are not developed to any extent in the Australian species, 
while our bayonet-leaved species are endemic. Hymenanthera, with 
excessively rigid branches, and Evynguim with spinous leaves and 
bracts, are both genera which range into Australia ; in the latter 
case the species being identical. The same remark applies to 
many of our harsh cutting-grasses or sedges, belonging to the 
genera Cladium, Gahma, Lepidosperma, Carex, &c., all being genera 
having wide distribution outside of New Zealand, and some 
having identical species in Australia. Again we have apparent 
anomalies in Dryacophyllum, with its pungent-tipped leaves (a 
character common, however, to the Australian species), and in 
Desmoschenus, the common, large, scabrid sedge of our sandhills, 
Very few species have the fruit protected against grazing animals. 
The only cases I know of are Sicyos angulatus, of which the nut is 
covered with barbed spines, but which is a species common to 
Australia and part of America, and Entelea arborescens, with a 
spinous capsule. This last plant is probably descended, after 
much modification, from a stray immigrant of a remote period, 
its nearest ally being Spfavmannia, a Cape of Good Hope 
enus. 
Z Even the following facts, slight and almost unappreciable as 
they are, tend to show that the absence of grazing animals tends 
to modify species to a considerable extent. We have in New 
Zealand two species of manuka (Leptospermum). Of these, L. sco- 
pavium, with pungent tips to its leaves, also occurs in Australia ; 
L. evicoides, which wants the prickly tip, is endemic. Similarly 
there are two species of Leucopogon, of which L. frazem, with a 
short spine or mucro at the apex of the leaf, occurs in Australia, 
and L. fasciculatus, with smooth leaves, is endemic. Lastly, there 
are five heaths of the genus Avcheria. Of these, two occur in New 
Zealand and one in Tasmania, all having obtuse leaves; the 
other two occur in Australia, and have very acute, almost spinous, 
leaves. | 
The next matter bearing on this subject to which I now 
request your attention is the relation of our flora to that of 
Australia,.as pointed out by Mr. Wallace in his latest theory, 
which is, that New Zealand was at one time connected with the 
Asiatic region by way of tropical Australia, while the whole of 
Eastern Australia was an island separate from what is now 
Western Australia by a comparatively shailow sea. This, he 
affirms, is proven by the depth of the now intervening seas, by 
the geological formations of all the countries concerned, by the 
occurrence of so many New Zealand genera and species in 
Eastern Australia, and the absence from New Zealand of so many 
characteristic Australian orders and genera. It would be out of 
