4 GO 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part ir. 
But this by no means exhausts the differences between New 
Zealand and Australia. No less than seven important Australian 
Natural Orders — Dilleniacege, Buettneriaceae, Polygaleae, Tre- 
mandreae, Casuarineae, Plaemodoraceae, and Xyrideae are entirely 
wanting in New Zealand and several others which are excess- 
ively abundant and highly characteristic of the former country 
are very poorly represented in the latter. Thus, Leguminosae 
are extremely abundant in Australia, where there are over 1,000 
species belonging to about 100 genera, many of them altogether 
peculiar to the country ; yet in New Zealand this great order 
is most scantily represented, there being only five genera and 
thirteen species ; and only two of these genera, Swainsonia and 
Clianthus, are Australian, and as the latter consists of but two 
species it may as well have passed from New Zealand to 
Australia as the other way, or more probably from some third 
country to them both. Goodeniaceae with twenty genera and 
230 species Australian, has but two species in New Zealand — 
and one of these is a salt-marsh plant found also in Tasmania 
and in Chile ; and four other large Australian orders — Rhamnece 
Myoporineaj, Proteaceae and Santalaceae, have very few repre- 
sentatives in New Zealand. 
We find, then, that the great fact we have to explain and 
account for is, the undoubted affinity of the New Zealand flora 
to that of Australia, but an affinity almost exclusively confined 
to the least predominant and least peculiar portion of that flora, 
leaving the most predominant, most characteristic, and most 
widely distributed portion absolutely unrepresented. We must 
however be careful not to exaggerate the amount of affinity with 
Australia, apparently implied by the fact that nearly six- 
sevenths of the New Zealand genera are also Australian, for, 
as we have already stated, a very large number of these are 
European, Antarctic, South American or Polynesian genera, 
whose presence in the two contiguous areas only indicates a 
common origin. About one-eighth, only, are absolutely confined 
to Australia and New Zealand (thirty-two genera), and even of 
these several are better represented in New Zealand than in 
Australia, and may therefore have passed from the former to the 
latter. No less than 174 of the New Zealand genera are 
