494 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part it. 
Madagascar and the Antilles, by the preservation in these 
localities of remnants of once wide-spread types, so we should 
prefer to consider the few genera common to Australia and 
South Africa as remnants of an ancient vegetation, once spread 
over the northern hemisphere, driven southward by the pressure 
of more specialised types, and now finding a refuge in these 
two widely separated southern lands. It is suggestive of such 
an explanation that these genera are either of very ancient 
groups— as Conifers and Cycads — or plants of low organisation 
as the Restiaceas — or of world-wide distribution, as Melan- 
thaceac. 
The Endemic Genera of Plants in New Zealand . — Returning 
now to the New Zealand flora, with which we are more espe- 
cially concerned, there only remains to be considered the pecu- 
liar or endemic genera which characterise it. These are thirty- 
two in number, and are mostly very isolated. A few have 
affinities with Arctic groups, others with Himalayan, or 
Australian genera ; several are tropical forms, but the majority 
appear to be altogether peculiar types of world-wide groups — as 
Leguminosse, Saxifragese, Compositse, Orchidese, &c. We must 
evidently trace bask these peculiar forms to the earliest immi- 
grants, either from the north or from the south ; and the great 
antiquity we are obliged to give to New Zealand — an antiquity 
supported by every feature in its fauna and flora, no less than by 
its geological structure, and its extinct forms of life 1 — affords 
ample time for the changes in the general distribution of plants, 
and for those due to isolation and modification under the influ- 
ence of changed conditions, which are manifested by the 
extreme peculiarity of many of these interesting endemic forms. 
1 Dr. Hector notes the occurrence of the genus Dammara in Triassic 
deposits, while in the Jurassic period New Zealand produced the genera 
Palceozamia, Oleandrium , A lethopteris, Camptopteris , Cycadites , Echino- 
strobus, &c., all Indian forms of the same age. Neocomian beds contain 
a true dicotyledonous leaf with Dammara and Araucaria. The Cretaceous 
deposits have produced a rich flora of dicotyledonous plants, many of 
which are of the same genera as the existing flora ; while the Miocene and 
other Tertiary deposits produce plants apparently almost identical with 
those now inhabiting the country. {Trans. New Zealand Inst. Yol. XI. 
1879, p. 536.) These facts agree well with the origin of the New Zealand 
flora developed in the last chapter. 
