PREFACE. 
13 * 
plants, made by Dr. Lauder Lindsay, F.L.S. ; and more recently very 
extensive and valuable collections, containing much novelty, from the 
Alps of the interior and west coasts, by another eminent geologist, 
Dr. Hector, F.G.S., Government Geologist, and Mr. Buchanan, his 
assistant. The most important of these last collections arrived whilst 
the sheets of this work were passing through the press, and have ma- 
terially delayed its publication ; for the discoveries which they contained 
seemed to me to be of sufficient importance to render it desirable that 
they should be embodied in the portions that had already been printed, 
which had to be recalled for the purpose. Again, since the completion 
of the Flowering plants, I have received two more contributions from 
these surveyors, including various new discoveries and new habitats, 
which must be reserved for the Supplement. 
To render this Handbook more complete, I have included in it the 
plants of the outlying islands properly belonging to the New Zealand 
group. They are the following : — 
Chatham Islands, whence I have a very few plants collected by 
Dr. Diefeeneach. The splendid Myosotidium nobile inhabits this 
group, which is well worthy of a careful exploration. This, through the 
liberality of Mr. Trayers, has been done by his son, who, he tells me, 
has returned from the group with considerable collections. 
Kermadec Islands. One of these, Sunday or Raoul Island, was 
visited by Captain Denham, in H.M.S. Herald, and botanized on by 
Mr. MacGillivray, naturalist, and his assistant, Mr. Milne ; its 
Flora, though characteristic of New Zealand, is more tropical than the 
latter, containing the widely-diffused Metrosideros polymorpha , and 
several tropical Ferns of the Pacific islands. I published a list of its 
plants in the Linnean Society’s Journal, Botany, vol. i. p. 125. 
Lord Auckland’s Group and Campbell’s Island were explored by 
Dr. Lyall and myself, during the stay there of the Antarctic Expedi- 
tion, in the year 1840. Our collections amounted to 870 species, and 
are published in the first volume of the ‘ Antarctic Flora,’ with 80 plates 
of 150 species. Lord Auckland’s group had been visited in the pre- 
vious year by Admiral D’TJrville’s Antarctic Expedition, but the col- 
lections made by his naturalists, MM. Hohbron and Jacquinot, were 
extremely small. The Cryptogamia alone are described, by M. Mon- 
tagne, in a work entitled ‘ Voyage au Pol^Sud,’ Bot. Crypt., 8vo, Paris, 
1845, with a folio atlas of 20 plates : figures of some of the Flowering 
plants and Ferns have likewise been published in the same form, 
