CHAP, xxii.] THE FLORA OF NEW ZEALAND. 



471 



10. Logania (3 sp.). Small seeds. Alpine plants. 



11. Hedycarya (1 sp.). 



12. Chiloglottis (1 sp.). Minute seeds. In Auckland Islands ; alpine in 



Australia. 



13. Prasophyllum (1 sp.). Minute seeds. Identical with Australian 



species. 



14. Orthoceras (1 sp.) Minute seeds. Close to an Australian species. 



15. Alepyrum (1 sp.). Alpine, moss-like. An Antarctic type. 



16. Dichelaclme (3 sp.). Identical with Australian species. An awned 



grass. 



We thus see that there are special features in most of these 

 plants that would facilitate transmission across the sea between 

 temperate AustrLilia and New Zealand, or to both from some 

 Antarctic island ; and the fact that in several of them the species 

 are absolutely identical shows that such transmission has 

 occurred in geologically recent times. 



Sjoecies common to New Zealand and Australia mostly Tem- 

 perate forms. — Let us now take the speeies which are com- 

 mon to New Zealand and Australia, but found nowhere else, 

 and which miust therefore have passed from one country to 

 the other at a more recent period than the mass of genera with 

 which we have hitherto been dealing. These are ninety-six in 

 number, and they present a striking contrast to the similarly 

 lestricted genera in being wholly temperate in character, the 

 entire list presenting only a single species which is confined to 

 sub-tropical East Australia — a grass {Apera, arunclinacea) only 

 found in a few localities on the New Zealand coast. 



Now it is clear that the larger portion, if not the whole, of 

 these plants must have reached New Zealand from Australia 

 (or in a few cases Australia from New Zealand), by transmission 

 across the sea, because we know there has been no land con- 

 nection during the Tertiary period, as proved by the absence of 

 all the Australian mammalia, and almost all the most character- 

 istic Australian birds, insects, and plants. The form of the sea- 

 bed shows that the distance could not have been less than 600 

 miles, even during the greatest extension of Southern New 

 Zealand and Tasmania ; and we have no reason to suppose it to 

 have been less, because in other cases an equally abundant flora 

 of identical species has reached islands at a still greater distance 



