ROMANCE OF THE NEW 
ZEALAND FLORA 
Early Botanists: Period 1769-1840. 
SPS 
Banks, Solander, Cunningham, Dief- 
fenbach, Hooker, Colenso, Bid- 
well, Forster, Richard, Raoul, 
Sinciair. 
Romance is an attractive word. Usuaily 
it ig associated with stirring incidents in 
the ives of men or women, or both, cul- 
minating in good fortune or success in high 
degree; in the attainment of great weaith 
from small beginnings; or the fame that 
accompanies the development of brilliant 
mental powers. Or it may be that other 
romance wherein a lady of high position, 
disregarding the obligations of “her. station 
in life, forms an attachment with some 
swain in thumbler cimcumstances, marries 
him, and ‘‘lives happily ever afterwards.”’ 
Or should I not alee quote the popular 
lady of the music hall who marries a duke 
or an earl, whose romantic translation into 
the charmed circle of aristocratic life has, 
alas! proved in only too many instances not 
of the “lived happily ever afterwards” 
type? But the word romance has in modern 
days come to have a wider significance. It 
has been made applicable to the unfolding 
of the marvels of nature, or in commercia! 
life to, say, the attractive story of Ocean 
and Nauru Islands and their vast deposi:s 
of phosphatic rock whose fertilising vaiue 
is counted in millions sterling. Then we 
have the romance of the coal tar dyes, of 
radium, of wireless, of many other of the 
profound mysteries of nature whose en- 
trancing stories lead us to marvel more and 
