CHAP. XXIII.] ARCTIC PLANTS IN NEW ZEALAND. 



491 



mimity between the European and Antarctic plants found in 

 all south temperate lands. Kerguelen's Land and The Grozets 

 are within about the same distance from the Antarctic con- 

 tinent as New Zealand and Tasmania, and ^\e need not there- 

 fore be surprised at finding in each of these islands some 

 Fuegian species which have not reached the others. Of course 

 there will remain difficulties of detail, as there always must 

 when we know so imperfectly the past changes of the earth's 

 surface and the history of the particular plants concerned. Sir 

 Joseph Hooker notes, for example, the curious fact that several 

 Compositse common to three such remote localities as the 

 Auckland Islands, Fuegia, and Kerguelen's Land, have no 

 pappus or seed-down, while such as have pappus are in no 

 case common even to two of these islands. Without knov/iug 

 the exact history and distribution of the genera to which these 

 plants belong it would be useless to offer any conjecture, except 

 that they are ancient forms which may have survived great 

 geographical changes, or may have some peculiar and exceptional 

 means of dispersion. 



Proofs of Migration Inj vmy of the Himalayas and Southern 

 Asia. — But although we may thus explain the presence of a 

 considerable portion of the European element in the floras of 

 New Zealand and Australia, we cannot account for the whole of 

 it by this means, because Australia itself contains a host of 

 European and Asiatic genera of which we find no trace in 

 New Zealand or South America, or any other Antarctic land. 

 We find, in fact, in Australia two distinct sets of European 

 plants. First we have a number of species identical with those 

 of Northern Europe or Asia (of the most characteristic of 

 which — thirty-eight in number — Sir Joseph Hooker gives a 

 list) ; and in the second place a scries of European genera 

 usually of a somewhat more southern character, mostly re- 

 presented by very distinct species, and all absent from New 

 Zealand ; such as Clematis, Papaver, Cleome, Polygala, Lava- 

 tera, Ajuga, &c. Now of the first set — the North European 

 species — about three-fourths occur in some parts of America, and 

 about half in South Temperate America or New Zealand ; 

 whence we may conclude that most of these, as well as some 



