584 Sinnott and Bailey .--The Origin and 
European or Asiatic in origin. Many of these are characteristic, not of 
the warmer parts of Eurasia, as might be expected, but of the distinctly 
temperate northern regions. Such genera include Ranunculus , Draba , 
Viola , Stellar ia, Rubus , Potentilla , Daucus , Galium , Bidens, Mentha , Rumex % 
and many others which are familiar. Hooker has compiled a list of such 
genera, apparently northern in origin, which have evidently entered 
Australia from the northern hemisphere. A study of this list shows that 
37 of its members are characteristic of tropical or sub-tropical Eurasia, and 
that 18 of these, or only 50 per cent., are herbs ; whereas out of 1 1 7 genera 
from the temperate parts of the Old World, 109, or 93 per cent., are herba- 
ceous. These very numerous { temperate 1 genera, which include a large 
number of species, make up the greater portion of that 30 per cent, of the 
Dicotyledons of Australia which are herbaceous. The rest of the herbs are 
either characteristically tropical forms, or are included in the few endemic 
herbaceous genera. The latter belong for the most part to the Australian 
families Stylideae and Goodenoviae, which are mainly herbaceous, and to 
the Compositae. These native herbs, as well as the northern ones, are 
most abundant in the cooler and more mountainous country in the south- 
eastern corner of the continent, and many of the native herbaceous genera 
are strictly alpine forms. 
All these facts lead to the conclusion that the ancient flora of Australia, 
long ago isolated and now represented by the endemic genera, was almost 
entirely composed of woody plants ; and that the bulk of the herbaceous 
flora of the continent to-day is not primitive, but has entered it in compara- 
tively recent times from the great centre of distribution of herbaceous plants 
in the north temperate zone. A further discussion of this immigration from 
the north will be reserved until we have considered the floras of New 
Zealand, southern South America, and South Africa. 
There are affinities between the flora of Australia and those of various 
oceanic islands which suggest that they may both be fragments of an 
ancient, more widely dispersed, vegetation. The phyllodineous Acacias, for 
example, are confined to Australia, with the exception of one species in the 
Mascarene islands, and another in Hawaii. The genus Santalum has its 
centre of distribution in Australia and the East Indies, but also occurs in 
Hawaii and Juan Fernandez. Elaeocarpus , another Australian and East 
Indian genus, occurs in New Zealand, the Mascarenes, Socotra, New 
Caledonia, and Hawaii. There are several other similar cases. 
B. New Zealand, 
New Zealand is neither a true oceanic island nor a typical continental 
one, for although it was apparently connected with the mainland in very 
ancient times, it has certainly been isolated for a long period. This isola- 
