PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
Forty-two years have elapsed since Sir J. D. Hooker published the first 
part of his ‘ Handbook of the New Zealand Flora,’ Although no com- 
plete account of the plants of the colony has since been prepared, botanical 
investigations have been actively and zealously carried on, and a large 
amount of fresh material obtained. No less than four hundred separate 
communications or short papers dealing with the botany of New Zealand 
have been published, and the number of new species proposed is consider- 
ably over a thousand. The literature and descriptions of the new species 
are scattered through the thirty-seven volumes of the “ Transactions of 
the New Zealand Institute’ and other publications, some of which are 
not readily accessible to the majority of workers in the colony. To 
make satisfactory use of such a mass of unarranged and undigested 
material is: beyond the power of any except a few experts: in any case 
an attempt to do so would prove both tedious and troublesome. In short, 
the want of a compendious Flora has long been a serious hindrance to the 
study of the indigenous vegetation, and a bar to inquiries of any kind 
connected therewith. 
For many years New Zealand botanists hoped that the preparation of 
a new Flora would be undertaken by the late Mr. T. Kirk. It was known 
that he had. long been collecting material for such a work. His many 
journeys, extending from the North Cape to the Auckland and Campbell 
Islands, had given him an unrivalled personal acquaintance with the 
vegetation, while his numerous writings afforded abundant proof of wide- 
spread knowledge, and of accurate and careful botanical research. Under 
such circumstances, the announcement made in 1894 that he had been 
engaged by the New Zealand Government to prepare a “ Students’ Flora 
of New Zealand’? was received with general approval. And when his 
death occurred in 1897 it was a disappointment to find that barely two- 
fifths of his task had been completed. This portion has since been printed 
by the Government, and its value intensifies the regret that the author 
did not live to complete the work for which he had made so much 
preparation, and for which he possessed so many undoubted qualifications. 
The publication of the fragment left by Mr. Kirk made the want of 
a complete Flora still more apparent, and in April, 1900, the Government 
was pleased to entrust me with the preparation of such a work. While 
allowed full freedom of action in all details, I was instructed to follow the 
