FRIENDS TAKING LEAVE AT HIKURANGI, ON THE WANGANUI RIVER. 
CHAPTER XXXVII. 
BOTANY. 
The Botany of New Zealand is extremely interesting, not 
so much for the beauty of its flora, as on account of the fact, 
that it has a peculiar and distinctive character of its own. 
This was noticed by the earliest explorers, and tends to 
prove the truth of the conjecture, hazarded in treating 
of the zoological features of the country; and although it 
is true eighty-nine South American species of plants have 
been discovered in New Zealand, and that seventy-seven 
of those belonging to these islands are found in Aus- 
tralia and South America, fifty of which are common also 
to Europe, and that sixty plants of the whole flora are 
European; still, the fact that there are twenty-six genera 
and five hundred and seven species, which is more than 
two-thirds of the whole, peculiar to New Zealand, must 
establish the claim of having a botany especially its own. 
