BOTANY. 
457 
extremely numerous. Several of the fungi are edible. Horses 
and cows have introduced the English mushroom. Varieties 
of the truffle and morell are also found. New Zealand is rich 
in its Alger, several of them are edible ; one kind, rimu, similar 
to the chondrus crisp us, or carrigreen moss, is boiled with the 
juice of the tupakihi, and the rimuroa, a large tubular variety, 
is roasted and eaten. 
Such is the brief sketch of the New Zealand flora, comprised 
in the islands named as forming its botanic centre ; how far 
portions of it may be found in the islands to the north of it, 
still remains to be ascertained. Allowing the New Zealand 
isles to be the disrupted links of an ancient continental line, 
we may reasonably expect to find some of the plants in many 
of the northern islands, wherever there is sufficient elevation 
to give a similar climate to its own. In corroboration of this 
idea, three New Zealand plants have been discovered on the 
lofty mountain of Kini-balu, in Borneo, under the equator, 
and these, too, of the most peculiar antarctic, New Zealand and 
Tasmanian genera, viz., Drapetes, Phyllocladus, and Drimys,* 
and it remains to be proved whether even the kauri itself, or 
a variety of it, may not be found even so far south as the 
south-western coast of New Zealand.j- 
Thus, the wonderful way in which the various floras of our 
earth blend with each other, clearly establish the harmonious 
unity of the whole. In Australia, everything blooms in winter; 
in fact, the seasons are reversed : the trees which retain their 
foliage in winter, shed it in summer, and the wintry winds, 
whose dismal howl tells us that summer is past, are there 
represented by the hot winds of summer, which make the 
same mournful noise, and have the same parching, withering 
effect on vegetation as our wintry ones. This is not the case in 
New Zealand; there the trees, indeed, shed their old leaves in 
summer; but the forest is ever green, and little difference is 
perceptible to mark the roll of seasons: an equable climate 
produces an equable vegetation. 
* See Dr. Hooker’s Introductory Essay, p. xxxvi. 
f See Brenner's Journal, who states that he there met with the kauri. 
