468 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part II. 
to the free immigration of such Australian types as were suitable 
to its climate, and which had already reached the tropical and sub- 
tropical portions of the eastern Australian island. It is here that 
we obtain the clue to those strange anomalies and contradictions 
presented by the New Zealand flora in its relation to Australia, 
which have been so clearly set forth by Sir Joseph Hooker, and 
which have so puzzled botanists to account for. But these appa- 
rent anomalies cease to present any difficulty when we see that the 
Australian plants in New Zealand were acquired, not directly, but, 
as it were, at second hand, by union with an island which itself 
had as yet only received a portion of the flora. And then, further 
difficulties were placed in the way of New Zealand receiving 
such an adequate representation of that portion of the flora 
which had reached East Australia as its climate and position 
entitled it to, by the fact of the union being, not with the tem- 
perate, but with the tropical and sub-tropical portions of that 
island, so that only those groups could be acquired which were 
less exclusively temperate, and had already established them- 
selves in the warmer portion of their new home. 
It is therefore no matter of surprise, but exactly what we 
should expect, that the great mass of pre-eminently temperate 
Australian genera should be absent from New Zealand, including 
the whole of such important families as Dilleniacese Treman- 
dreee, Buettneriacse, Polygalese, Casuarinese, and Hsemodoracese ; 
while others, such as Rutaceae, Stackhousieae, Rhamneae, Myr- 
taceae, Proteaceae, and Santalaceae, are represented by only a few 
species. Thus, too, we can explain the absence of all the pecu- 
liar Australian Leguminosae ; for these were still mainly confined 
mixed vegetation of dicotyledonous leaves and ferns, that in general char- 
acter represent those which now constitute the flora of the country. It 
would appear from the recent surveys of Dr. Haast that the large saurian 
reptiles in the Amuri and Waipara beds, the collections of which have 
been added to largely during the past year by the exertions of Mr. Henry 
Travers, lived during the formation of these coal-seams, and coeval with 
them was a species of the Kauri tree, the leaves of which have been found 
imbedded with the reptilian bones.'’ He goes on to suggest that “ even 
at this remote period, New Zealand formed part of an area that possessed 
an insular flora, the peculiar characters of which have been preserved to 
the present time.” (Trans. N. Z. Inst ., Y. p. 423.) 
