8* 
PREFACE. 
feet specimens, and which, were they perfect, could only be satisfactorily 
examined in a living state. I have, however, omitted no species known 
to me as a native of New Zealand, whether from books or collections. 
By adopting this plan I have, I hope, made this portion of the ‘ Hand- 
book’ a fair introduction to the study of the Orders of New Zealand 
Flowerless plants, and a safe guide to the principal species ; and I also 
hope that this will prove to be a more useful way of treating so very 
abstruse a subject, than would systematic descriptions, of equal length 
and pretensions to accuracy, of all the obscure and supposed species, 
whether common or scarce, perfect or imperfect. 
In the course of preparing this work, I have re-examined most of the 
materials described in my ‘ Flora Novae-Zelandise ;’ # these consisted of 
the collections of Banks and Solander, and of Forster, contained in the 
British Museum, and of those of the Cunninghams, Colenso, Sinclair, 
Bidwill, DiefFenbach, Baoul, Lyall, and my own, all preserved in the 
‘ Hookerian Herbarium.’ Since the publication of that work, little of 
novelty has been added to the Flora of the Northern Island, but very 
many interesting discoveries have been made in the Middle Island, add- 
ing fully one-third to the previously known number of New Zealand 
Flowering Plants. 
Much remains to be done towards the Botany of the Northern Is- 
land especially; of the whole province Taranaki, nothing is known; 
and except the Buahine range, by Colenso, no mountain region has 
been approximately well explored. Then too of the outlying islands, as 
the Kermadec and Chatham Islands, very little is known, and of Bounty 
or Antipodes Island nothing, whilst much remains to be collected on 
Lord Auckland’s group, Campbell’s Island and Macquarrie Island. The 
materials are still wanting for a comparison of the volcanic mountains of 
the Northern Island with the primitive or other mountains of the Mid- 
dle Island, a comparison essential to make before the geological or cli- 
matic relations of the flora of either island can be ascertained. These 
subjects and those of the geographical distribution of New Zealand 
plants, and of the apparently recent development of many of its spe- 
cies by variation from others still existing in the islands, are, however, 
foreign to a purely systematic Handbook, and I shall hope to take them 
up when this is finished. 
In the ‘Flora Novte-Zelandiae,’ I have detailed at length the labours 
* This, which forms the second'part of the ‘ Botany of the Antarctic Expedition of Sir 
J. Ross,’ was published in 1854-5, in two volumes, 4to, with 130 plates, coloured (including 
1060 species), of New Zealand plants. 
