498 



APPENDIX 



might provide several other of the coast villages with good water 

 from the mountains. Dripping- cliffs, in particular, ought to be 

 fairly common; and, since they afford a substitute for permanent 

 springs, they might readily be utilised for this purpose. 



Note 37 (p. 358). 

 Uncinia. 



It has been shown in Chapter XVI. that a few species of Car ex 

 have probably crossed the Southern Ocean between the southern 

 portion of South America and the Australian and New Zealand 

 region. Considerable light is thrown on the possibility of this 

 oceanic traverse by the distribution in high southern latitudes of 

 another genus of the Caricoidece, namely, Uncinia, which is essentially 

 a genus of these latitudes, since four-fifths of its species are there 

 confined. 



The twenty-four species recognised in KiikenthaPs monograph on 

 the Caricoidece (Pflanzenreich, 1909) are chiefly divided between the 

 two widely sundered regions centering in the southern extreme of 

 South America and in New Zealand. The two regions, however, are 

 connected by a single species (U. macrolepis) found both in the 

 southern island of New Zealand and in Fuegia; and they are in- 

 directly linked together by the association in the intervening islands 

 of Amsterdam and St. Paul of a New Zealand species, U. compacta, 

 and a Fuegian species, U. brevicaulis (see Hemsley's Chall. Bot., III., 

 159, 267). 



The species are about equally divided between the two regions, 

 South America holding twelve and New Zealand thirteen species. 

 Of the South American species six are confined to the southern 

 portion extending from South Chile to Fuegia ; two are spread over 

 much of the continent and reach in one case Central America ; one 

 (U. jamaicensis) is confined to the tropical and subtropical portions 

 of South America and to Central America and the West Indies, 

 occurring often at high altitudes ; one is peculiar to Juan Fernandez ; 

 and the last two are Antarctic species, extending in one case to the 

 islands of Tristan da Cunha, St. Paul, and Amsterdam, and in the 

 other to the South Island of New Zealand. Of the New Zealand 

 species seven are restricted to that region and to the neighbouring 

 small islands (Stewart, Antipodes, Chatham, etc.); and six extend 

 to regions outside, namely, four to Australia and Tasmania, one to 

 Hawaii, and one to Antarctic South America. This does not exhaust 

 the limits of dispersal from the New Zealand centre, since among the 

 species it has lent to Australia one has reached New Guinea and 

 another Amsterdam and Kerguelen Islands. 



Two significant facts of distribution are here disclosed. In the 

 first place, as regards the New Zealand group of plants Australia has 

 no species of its own, every species occurring outside New Zealand 

 and the small islands near being a New Zealand species, even in such 

 distant localities as New Guinea and Hawaii. In the same way the 

 southern part of South America is still the abode of ten out of the 



