New Zealand Flora , with a Reply to Criticism. 349 
Are Endemics chiefly Relicts? 
Dr. Sinnott takes the popular view, which is based, it must be 
remembered, upon an assumed efficacy of Natural Selection for which 
as yet there is little proof, that species with small areas of distribution owe 
the fact that those areas are small to the competition of other more success¬ 
ful types. But there is little evidence for such a belief. It is simply a way 
of looking at the actual fact, which is all we have to go upon, that A occu¬ 
pies a large and B a small area. My way of looking at the same fact is 
to suppose that A is older than B . This is really a much more simple 
explanation, especially when we remember that the areas occupied by the 
different species in a genus, or the different genera in a family, usually 
increase fairly regularly from very small to large. • If one have areas repre¬ 
sented by 1, n, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, id, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, it 
seems an unnecessarily oblique way of looking at the facts to say that 1, 3, 
3, 4, and 5 must be regarded as dying out, while 16 to 20 are to be looked 
upon as successful and expanding species, and no two authors can agree 
about whether the intermediate species 6 to 15 are one thing or the other. 
It is far more simple to regard all as still in process of expansion, but that 
some, by reason of greater age and perhaps other advantages, have grown 
larger than others. 
Not only is this explanation simpler, but predictions can be based upon 
it, a thing which was impossible with Natural Selection. I have already based 
quite a number of predictions upon my hypothesis of age and area, and 
have shown that they are verified when the actual facts come to be 
examined. Now it seems to me that when one has to consider the acceptance 
of an hypothesis which admits of prediction, and when the predictions made 
with its aid lead at once to the discovery of new facts hitherto unknown, and 
confirming the hypothesis, the balance of probability is likely to be in 
its favour. 
Dr. Sinnott says, on p. 212 ( 11 ), that I disregard the evidence that 
many endemics are not of local origin, but are relicts. Here it seems to me 
that from giving special attention to cases of extinction he is apt to forget 
that the number of examples in which this has been shown to be likely is 
comparatively small. I very much doubt if it can be regarded as probable 
for even 1 per cent, of the endemic species of the world. There are certainly 
not ten cases in New Zealand, and the islands contain over 900 endemic 
flowering plants. Age and area simply shows that practically all endemic 
species in a given country behave in the same way, but cannot easily distin¬ 
guish between those which were actually formed de novo in the country, and 
those that may have come in from outside over land now submerged. But 
if these species are endemic, then they must have originated, if not within 
