468 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part II. 



to the free immigration of such Australian types as were suitable 

 to its climate, and which had already reached the tropical and sub- 

 tropical ^portions of the eastern Australian island. It is here that 

 we obtain the clue to those strange anomalies and contradictions 

 presented by the New Zealand flora in its relation to Australia, 

 which have been so clearly set forth by Sir Joseph Hooker, and 

 which have so puzzled botanists to account for. But these appa- 

 rent anomalies cease to present any difficulty when we see that the 

 Australian plants in New Zealand were acquired, not directly, but, 

 as it were, at second hand, by union with an island which itself 

 had as yet only received a portion of the flora. And then, further 

 difficulties were placed in the way of New Zealand receiving 

 such an adequate representation of that portion of the flora 

 which had reached East Australia as its climate and position 

 entitled it to, by the fact of the union being, not with the tem- 

 perate, but with the tropical and sub-tropical portions of that 

 island, so that only those groups could be acquired which were 

 less exclusively temperate, and had already established them- 

 selves in the warmer portion of their new home. 



It is therefore no matter of surprise, but exactly what we 

 should expect, that the great mass of pre-eminently temperate 

 Australian genera should be absent from New Zealand, including 

 the whole of such important families as Dilleniacese Treman- 

 drese, Buettneriacse, Polygalese, Casuarinese, and Hsemodoracese ; 

 while others, such as Rutacese, Stackhousiese, Rhamnese, Myr- 

 tacese, Proteacese, and Santalacese, are represented by only a few 

 species. Thus, too, we can explain the absence of all the pecu- 

 liar Australian Leguminosse ; for these were still mainly confined 



mixed vegetation of dicotyledonous leaves and ferns, that in general char- 

 acter represent those which now constitute the flora of the country. It 

 would appear from the recent surveys of Dr. Haast that the large saurian 

 reptiles in the Amuri and Waipara beds, the collections of which have 

 been added to largely during the past year by the exertions of Mr. Henry 

 Travers, lived during the formation of these coal-seams, and coeval with 

 them was a species of the Kauri tree, the leaves of which have been found 

 imbedded with the reptilian bones." He goes on to suggest that "even 

 at this remote period, New Zealand formed part of an area that possessed 

 an insular flora, the peculiar characters of which have been preserved to 

 the present time." {Trans, N. Z. Inst, V. p. 423.) 



