Island Life Part 36

196. Cerchneis moluccensis X Java, Moluccas 197. Polioaetus humilis X India, Malaya STRIGIDae. 198. Athene punctulata X 199. ,, ochracea X 200. Scops magicus X Amboyna, &c.?

201. ,, menadensis X Flores, Madagascar 202. Ninox j.a.ponicus X China, j.a.pan *203. ,, scutulata X Malacca (Salv.) 204. Strix rosenbergi X --------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+--------------------

{471}

CHAPTER XXI

ANOMALOUS ISLANDS: NEW ZEALAND

Position and Physical Features of New Zealand--Zoological Character of New Zealand--Mammalia--Wingless Birds Living and Extinct--Recent Existence of the Moa--Past Changes of New Zealand deduced from its Wingless Birds--Birds and Reptiles of New Zealand--Conclusions from the Peculiarities of the New Zealand Fauna.

The fauna of New Zealand has been so recently described, and its bearing on the past history of the islands so fully discussed in my large work already referred to, that it would not be necessary to introduce the subject again, were it not that we now approach it from a somewhat different point of view, and with some important fresh material, which will enable us to arrive at more definite conclusions as to the nature and origin of this remarkable fauna and flora. The present work is, besides, addressed to a wider cla.s.s of readers than my former volumes, and it would be manifestly incomplete if all reference to one of the most remarkable and interesting of insular faunas was omitted.

The two great islands which mainly const.i.tute New Zealand are together about as large as the kingdom of Italy. They stretch over thirteen degrees of lat.i.tude in the warmer portion of the south-temperate zone, their extreme points corresponding to the lat.i.tudes of Vienna and Cyprus. Their climate throughout is mild and {472} equable, their vegetation is luxuriant, and deserts or uninhabitable regions are as completely unknown as in our own islands.

The geological structure of these islands has a decidedly continental character. Ancient sedimentary rocks, granite, and modern volcanic formations abound; gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, and coal are plentiful; and there are also some considerable deposits of early or late Tertiary age. The Secondary rocks alone are very scantily developed, and such fragments as exist are chiefly of Cretaceous age, often not clearly separated from the succeeding Eocene beds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING DEPTHS OF SEA AROUND AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.]

The light tint indicates a depth of less than 1,000 fathoms.

The dark tint ,, ,, more than 1,000 fathoms.

The position of New Zealand, in the great Southern Ocean, about 1,200 miles distant from the Australian {473} continent, is very isolated. It is surrounded by a moderately deep ocean; but the form of the sea-bottom is peculiar, and may help us in the solution of some of the anomalies presented by its living productions. The line of 200 fathoms encloses the two islands and extends their area considerably; but the 1,000-fathom line, which indicates the land-area that would be produced if the sea-bottom were elevated 6,000 feet, has a very remarkable conformation, extending in a broad ma.s.s westward and northward, then sending out a great arm reaching to beyond Lord Howe's Island. Norfolk Island is situated on a moderate-sized bank, while two others, much more extensive, to the north-west approach the great barrier reef, which here carries the 1,000-fathom line more than 300 miles from the coast. It is probable that a bank, less than 1,500 fathoms below the surface, extends over this area, thus forming a connection with tropical Australia and New Guinea. Temperate Australia, on the other hand, is divided from New Zealand by an oceanic gulf about 700 miles wide and between 2,000 and 3,000 fathoms deep. The 2,000-fathom line embraces all the islands immediately round New Zealand as far as the Fijis to the north, while a submarine plateau at a depth somewhere between one and two thousand fathoms stretches southward to the Antarctic continent. Judging from these indications, we should say that the most probable ancient connections of New Zealand were with tropical Australia, New Caledonia, and the Fiji Islands, and perhaps at a still more remote epoch, with the great Southern continent by means of intervening lands and islands; and we shall find that a land-connection or near approximation in these two directions, at remote periods, will serve to explain many of the remarkable anomalies which these islands present.

_Zoological Character of New Zealand._--We see, then, that both geologically and geographically New Zealand has more of the character of a "continental" than of an "oceanic" island, yet its zoological characteristics are such as almost to bring it within the latter category--and it is this which gives it its anomalous character. It is usually {474} considered to possess no indigenous mammalia; it has no snakes, and only one frog; it possesses (living or quite recently extinct) an extensive group of birds incapable of flight; and its productions generally are wonderfully isolated, and seem to bear no predominant or close relation to those of Australia or any other continent. These are the characteristics of an oceanic island; and thus we find that the inferences from its physical structure and those from its forms of life directly contradict each other. Let us see how far a closer examination of the latter will enable us to account for this apparent contradiction.

_Mammalia of New Zealand._--The only undoubtedly indigenous mammalia appear to be two species of bats, one of which (_Scotophilus tuberculatus_) is, according to Mr. Dobson, identical with an Australian form, while the other (_Mystacina tuberculata_) forms a very remarkable and isolated genus of Emballonuridae, a family which extends throughout all the tropical regions of the globe. The genus Mystacina was formerly considered to belong to the American Phyllostomidae, but this has been shown to be an error.[117] The poverty of New Zealand in bats is very remarkable when compared with our own islands where there are at least twelve distinct species, though we have a far less favourable climate.

Of the existence of truly indigenous land mammals in New Zealand there is at present no positive evidence, but there is some reason to believe that one if not two species may be found there. The Maoris say that before Europeans came to their country a forest-rat abounded and was largely used for food. They believe that their ancestors brought it with them when they first came to the country; but it has now become almost, if not quite, exterminated by the European brown rat. What this native animal was is still somewhat doubtful. Several specimens have been caught at different times which have been declared by the natives to be the true _Kiore Maori_--as they term it, but these have usually proved on examination to be either the European black rat or some of the native Australian rats which now {475} often find their way on board s.h.i.+ps. But within the last few years many skulls of a rat have been obtained from the old Maori cooking-places, and from a cave a.s.sociated with moa bones; and Captain Hutton, who has examined them, states that they belong to a true Mus, but differ from the _Mus rattus_. This animal might have been on the islands when the Maoris first arrived, and in that case would be truly indigenous; while the Maori legend of their "ancestors" bringing the rat from their Polynesian home may be altogether a myth invented to account for its presence in the islands, because the only other land mammal which they knew--the dog--was certainly so brought. The question can only be settled by the discovery of remains of a rat in some deposit of an age decidedly anterior to the first arrival of the Maori race in New Zealand.[118]

Much more interesting is the reported existence in the mountains of the South Island of a small otter-like animal. Dr. Haast has seen its tracks, resembling those of our European otter, at a height of 3,000 feet above the sea in a region never before trodden by man; and the animal itself was seen by two gentlemen near Lake Heron, about seventy miles due west of Christchurch. It was described as being dark brown and the size of a large rabbit. On being struck at with a whip, it uttered a shrill yelping sound and disappeared in the water.[119] An animal seen so closely as to be struck at with a whip could hardly have been mistaken for a dog--the only other animal that it could possibly be supposed to have been, and a dog would certainly not have "disappeared in the water." This account, as well as the footsteps, point to an aquatic animal; and if it now frequents only the high alpine lakes and streams, this might explain why it has never yet been captured. Hochstetter also states that it has a native name--Waitoteke--a striking evidence of its actual existence, while a gentleman who lived many years in the district a.s.sures me that {476} it is universally believed in by residents in that part of New Zealand. The actual capture of this animal and the determination of its characters and affinities could not fail to aid us greatly in our speculations as to the nature and origin of the New Zealand fauna.[120]

_Wingless Birds, Living and Extinct._--Almost equally valuable with mammalia in affording indications of geographical changes are the wingless birds for which New Zealand is so remarkable. These consist of four species of Apteryx, called by the natives "kiwis,"--creatures which hardly look like birds owing to the apparent absence (externally) of tail or wings and the dense covering of hair-like feathers. They vary in size from that of a small fowl up to that of a turkey, and have a long slightly curved bill, somewhat resembling that of the snipe or ibis. Two species appear to be confined to the South Island, and one to the North Island, but all are becoming scarce, and they will no doubt gradually become extinct. These birds are generally cla.s.sed with the Struthiones or ostrich tribe, but they form a distinct family, and in many respects differ greatly from all other known birds.

But besides these, a number of other wingless birds, called "moas,"

inhabited New Zealand during the period of human occupation, and have only recently become extinct. These were much larger birds than the kiwis, and some of them were even larger than the ostrich, a specimen {477} of _Dinornis maximus_ mounted in the British Museum in its natural att.i.tude being eleven feet high. They agreed, however, with the living Apteryx in the character of the pelvis and some other parts of the skeleton, while in their short bill and in some important structural features they resembled the emu of Australia and the ca.s.sowaries of New Guinea.[121] No less than eleven distinct species of these birds have now been discovered; and their remains exist in such abundance--in recent fluviatile deposits, in old native cooking places, and even scattered on the surface of the ground--that complete skeletons of several of them have been put together, ill.u.s.trating various periods of growth from the chick up to the adult bird.

Feathers have also been found attached to portions of the skin, as well as the stones swallowed by the birds to a.s.sist digestion, and eggs, some containing portions of the embryo bird; so that everything confirms the statements of the Maoris--that their ancestors found these birds in abundance on the islands, that they hunted them for food, and that they finally exterminated them only a short time before the arrival of Europeans.[122] Bones of Apteryx are also found fossil, but apparently of the same species as the living birds. {478} How far back in geological time these creatures or their ancestral types lived in New Zealand we have as yet no evidence to show. Some specimens have been found under a considerable depth of fluviatile deposits which may be of Quaternary or even of Pliocene age; but this evidently affords us no approximation to the time required for the origin and development of such highly peculiar insular forms.

_Past Changes of New Zealand deduced from its Wingless Birds._--It has been well observed by Captain Hutton, in his interesting paper already referred to, that the occurrence of such a number of species of Struthious birds living together in so small a country as New Zealand is altogether unparalleled elsewhere on the globe. This is even more remarkable when we consider that the species are not equally divided between the two islands, for remains of no less than ten out of the eleven known species of Dinornis have been found in a single swamp in the South Island, where also three of the species of Apteryx occur. The New Zealand Struthiones, in fact, very nearly equal in number those of all the rest of the world, and nowhere else do more than three species occur in any one continent or island, while no more than two ever occur in the same district. Thus, there appear to be two closely allied species of ostriches inhabiting Africa and South-western Asia respectively. South America has three species of Rhea, each in a separate district. Australia has an eastern and a western variety of emu, and a ca.s.sowary in the north; while eight other ca.s.sowaries are known from the islands north of Australia--one from Ceram, two from the Aru Islands, one from Jobie, one from New Britain, and three from New Guinea--but of these last one is confined to the northern and another to the southern part of the island.

This law, of the distribution of allied species in separate areas--which is found to apply more or less accurately to all cla.s.ses of animals--is so entirely opposed to the crowding together of no less that fifteen species of wingless birds in the small area of New Zealand, that the idea is at once suggested of great geographical changes. Captain Hutton points out that if the islands from Ceram to New Britain {479} were to become joined together, we should have a large number of species of ca.s.sowary (perhaps several more than are yet discovered) in one land area. If now this land were gradually to be submerged, leaving a central elevated region, the different species would become crowded together in this portion just as the moas and kiwis were in New Zealand. But we also require, at some remote epoch, a more or less complete union of the islands now inhabited by the separate species of ca.s.sowaries, in order that the common ancestral form which afterwards became modified into these species, could have reached the places where they are now found; and this gives us an idea of the complete series of changes through which New Zealand is believed to have pa.s.sed in order to bring about its abnormally dense population of wingless birds.

First, we must suppose a land connection with some country inhabited by struthious birds, from which the ancestral forms might be derived; secondly, a separation into many considerable islands, in which the various distinct species might become differentiated; thirdly, an elevation bringing about the union of these islands to unite the distinct species in one area; and fourthly, a subsidence of a large part of the area, leaving the present islands with the various species crowded together.

If New Zealand has really gone through such a series of changes as here suggested, some proofs of it might perhaps be obtained in the outlying islands which were once, presumably, joined with it. And this gives great importance to the statement of the aborigines of the Chatham Islands, that the Apteryx formerly lived there but was exterminated about 1835. It is to be hoped that some search will be made here and also in Norfolk Island, in both of which it is not improbable remains either of Apteryx or Dinornis might be discovered.

So far we find nothing to object to in the speculations of Captain Hutton, with which, on the contrary, we almost wholly concur; but we cannot follow him when he goes on to suggest an Antarctic continent uniting New Zealand and Australia with South America, and probably also with South Africa, in order to explain the existing distribution {480} of struthious birds. Our best anatomists, as we have seen, agree that both Dinornis and Apteryx are more nearly allied to the ca.s.sowaries and emus than to the ostriches and rheas; and we see that the form of the sea-bottom suggests a former connection with North Australia and New Guinea--the very region where these types most abound, and where in all probability they originated. The suggestion that all the struthious birds of the world sprang from a common ancestor at no very remote period, and that their existing distribution is due to direct land communication between the countries they _now_ inhabit, is one utterly opposed to all sound principles of reasoning in questions of geographical distribution. For it depends upon two a.s.sumptions, both of which are at least doubtful, if not certainly false--the first, that their distribution over the globe has never in past ages been very different from what it is now; and the second, that the ancestral forms of these birds never had the power of flight. As to the first a.s.sumption, we have found in almost every case that groups now scattered over two or more continents formerly lived in intervening areas of existing land. Thus the marsupials of South America and Australia are connected by forms which lived in North America and Europe; the camels of Asia and the llamas of the Andes had many extinct common ancestors in North America; the lemurs of Africa and Asia had their ancestors in Europe, as had the trogons of South America, Africa, and tropical Asia. But besides this general evidence we have direct proof that the struthious birds had a wider range in past times than now. Remains of extinct rheas have been found in Central Brazil, and those of ostriches in North India; while remains, believed to be of struthious birds, are found in the Eocene deposits of England; and the Cretaceous rocks of North America have yielded the extraordinary toothed bird, Hesperornis, which Professor O. Marsh declares to have been "a carnivorous swimming ostrich."

As to the second point, we have the remarkable fact that all known birds of this group have not only the rudiments of wing-bones, but also the rudiments of wings, that is, an external limb bearing rigid quills or largely-developed {481} plumes. In the ca.s.sowary these wing-feathers are reduced to long spines like porcupine-quills, while even in the Apteryx, the minute external wing bears a series of nearly twenty stiff quill-like feathers.[123] These facts render it almost certain that the struthious birds do not owe their imperfect wings to a direct evolution from a reptilian type, but to a retrograde development from some low form of winged birds, a.n.a.logous to that which has produced the dodo and the solitaire from the more highly-developed pigeon-type. Professor Marsh has proved, that so far back as the Cretaceous period, the two great forms of birds--those with a keeled sternum and fairly-developed wings, and those with a convex keel-less sternum and rudimentary wings--already existed side by side; while in the still earlier Archaeopteryx of the Jura.s.sic period we have a bird with well-developed wings, and therefore probably with a keeled sternum. We are evidently, therefore, very far from a knowledge of the earliest stages of bird life, and our acquaintance with the various forms that have existed is scanty in the extreme; but we may be sure that birds acquired wings, and feathers, and some power of flight, before they developed a keeled sternum, since we see that bats with no such keel fly very well. Since, therefore, the struthious birds all have perfect feathers, and all have rudimentary wings, which are anatomically those of true birds, not the rudimentary fore-legs of reptiles, and since we know that in many higher groups of birds--as the pigeons and the rails--the wings have become more or less aborted, and the keel of the sternum greatly reduced in size by disuse, it seems probable that the very remote ancestors of the rhea, the ca.s.sowary, and the apteryx, were true flying birds, although not perhaps provided with a keeled sternum, or possessing very great powers of flight. But in addition to the possible ancestral power of flight, we have the undoubted fact that the rhea and the emu both swim freely, the former having been seen swimming from island to island off the coast of Patagonia. This, taken in connection with the wonderful aquatic ostrich of the Cretaceous period discovered by Professor Marsh, opens {482} up fresh possibilities of migration; while the immense antiquity thus given to the group and their universal distribution in past time, renders all suggestions of special modes of communication between the parts of the globe in which their scattered remnants _now_ happen to exist, altogether superfluous and misleading.

The bearing of this argument on our present subject is, that so far as accounting for the presence of wingless birds in New Zealand is concerned, we have nothing whatever to do with any possible connection, by way of a southern continent or antarctic islands, with South America and South Africa, because the nearest allies of its moas and kiwis are the ca.s.sowaries and emus, and we have distinct indications of a former land extension towards North Australia and New Guinea, which is exactly what we require for the original entrance of the struthious type into the New Zealand area.

_Winged Birds and Lower Vertebrates of New Zealand._--Having given a pretty full account of the New Zealand fauna elsewhere[124] I need only here point out its bearing on the hypothesis now advanced, of the former land-connection having been with North Australia, New Guinea, and the Western Pacific Islands, rather than with the temperate regions of Australia.

Of the Australian genera of birds, which are found also in New Zealand, almost every one ranges also into New Guinea or the Pacific Islands, while the few that do not extend beyond Australia are found in its northern districts. As regards the peculiar New Zealand genera, all whose affinities can be traced are allied to birds which belong to the tropical parts of the Australian region; while the starling family, to which four of the most remarkable New Zealand birds belong (the genera Creadion, Heterolocha, and Callaeas), is totally wanting in temperate Australia and is comparatively scarce in the entire Australian region, but is abundant in the Oriental region, with which New Guinea and the Moluccas are in easy communication.

It is certainly a most suggestive fact that there are more than sixty {483} genera of birds peculiar to the Australian continent (with Tasmania), many of them almost or quite confined to its temperate portions, and that no single one of these should be represented in temperate New Zealand.[125]

The affinities of the living and more highly organised, no less than those of the extinct and wingless birds, strikingly accord with the line of communication indicated by the deep submarine bank connecting these temperate islands with the tropical parts of the Australian region.

The reptiles, so far as they go, are quite in accordance with the birds.

The lizards belong to two genera, Lygosoma, which has a wide range in all the tropics as well as in Australia; and Naultinus, a genus peculiar to New Zealand, but belonging to a family--Geckonidae--spread over the whole of the warmer parts of the world. Australia, with New Guinea, on the other hand, has a peculiar family, and no less than twenty-one peculiar genera of lizards, many of which are confined to its temperate regions, but no one of them extends to temperate New Zealand.[126] The extraordinary lizard-like _Hatteria punctata_ of New Zealand forms of itself a distinct order of reptiles, in some respects intermediate between lizards and crocodiles, and having therefore no affinity with any living animal.

The only representative of the Amphibia in New Zealand is a solitary frog of a peculiar genus (_Liopelma hochstetteri_); but it has no affinity for any of the Australian frogs, which are numerous, and belong to eleven different families; while the Liopelma belongs {484} to a very distinct family (Discoglossidae), confined to the Palaearctic region.

Of the fresh-water fishes we need only say here, that none belong to peculiar Australian types, but are related to those of temperate South America or of Asia.

The Invertebrate cla.s.ses are comparatively little known, and their modes of dispersal are so varied and exceptional that the facts presented by their distribution can add little weight to those already adduced. We will, therefore, now proceed to the conclusions which can fairly be drawn from the general facts of New Zealand natural history already known to us.

_Deductions from the Peculiarities of the New Zealand Fauna._--The total absence (or extreme scarcity) of mammals in New Zealand obliges us to place its union with North Australia and New Guinea at a very remote epoch. We must either go back to a time when Australia itself had not yet received the ancestral forms of its present marsupials and monotremes, or we must suppose that the portion of Australia with which New Zealand was connected was then itself isolated from the mainland, and was thus without a mammalian population. We shall see in our next chapter that there are certain facts in the distribution of plants, no less than in the geological structure of the country, which favour the latter view. But we must on any supposition place the union very far back, to account for the total want of ident.i.ty between the winged birds of New Zealand and those peculiar to Australia, and a similar want of accordance in the lizards, the fresh-water fishes, and the more important insect-groups of the two countries. From what we know of the long geological duration of the generic types of these groups we must certainly go back to the earlier portion of the Tertiary period at least, in order that there should be such a complete disseverance as exists between the characteristic animals of the two countries; and we must further suppose that, since their separation, there has been no subsequent union or sufficiently near approach to allow of any important intermigration, even of winged birds, between them. It seems probable, therefore, that {485} the Bampton shoal west of New Caledonia, and Lord Howe's Island further south, formed the western limits of that extensive land in which the great wingless birds and other isolated members of the New Zealand fauna were developed. Whether this early land extended eastward to the Chatham Islands and southward to the Macquaries we have no means of ascertaining, but as the intervening sea appears to be not more than about 1,500 fathoms deep it is quite possible that such an amount of subsidence may have occurred. It is possible, too, that there may have been an extension northward to the Kermadec Islands, and even further to the Tonga and Fiji Islands, though this is hardly probable, or we should find more community between their productions and those of New Zealand.

A southern extension towards the Antarctic continent at a somewhat later period seems more probable, as affording an easy pa.s.sage for the numerous species of South American and Antarctic plants, and also for the identical and closely allied fresh-water fishes of these countries.

The subsequent breaking up of this extensive land into a number of separate islands in which the distinct species of moa and kiwi were developed--their union at a later period, and the final submergence of all but the existing islands, is a pure hypothesis, which seems necessary to explain the occurrence of so many species of these birds in a small area but of which we have no independent proof. There are, however, some other facts which would be explained by it, as the presence of three peculiar but allied genera of starlings, the three species of parrots of the genus Nestor, and the six distinct rails of the genus Ocydromus, as well as the numerous species in some of the peculiar New Zealand genera of plants, which seem less likely to have been developed in a single area than when isolated, and thus preserved from the counteracting influence of intercrossing.

In the present state of our knowledge these seem all the conclusions we can arrive at from a study of the New Zealand fauna; but as we fortunately possess a tolerably {486} full and accurate knowledge of the flora of New Zealand, as well as of that of Australia and the south temperate lands generally, it will be well to see how far these conclusions are supported by the facts of plant distribution, and what further indications they afford us of the early history of these most interesting countries. This inquiry is of sufficient importance to occupy a separate chapter.

{487}

CHAPTER XXII

THE FLORA OF NEW ZEALAND: ITS AFFINITIES AND PROBABLE ORIGIN

Relations of the New Zealand Flora to that of Australia--General Features of the Australian Flora--The Floras of South-eastern and South-western Australia--Geological Explanation of the Differences of these two Floras--The Origin of the Australian Element in the New Zealand Flora--Tropical Character of the New Zealand Flora Explained--Species Common to New Zealand and Australia mostly Temperate Forms--Why Easily Dispersed Plants have often Restricted Ranges--Summary and Conclusion on the New Zealand Flora.

Although plants have means of dispersal far exceeding those possessed by animals, yet as a matter of fact comparatively few species are carried for very great distances, and the flora of a country taken as a whole usually affords trustworthy indications of its past history. Plants, too, are more numerous in species than the higher animals, and are almost always better known; their affinities have been more systematically studied; and it may be safely affirmed that no explanation of the origin of the fauna of a country can be sound, which does not also explain, or at least harmonise with, the distribution and relations of its flora. The distribution of the two may be very different, but both should be explicable by the same series of geographical changes.

The relations of the flora of New Zealand to that of Australia have long formed an insoluble enigma for {488} botanists. Sir Joseph Hooker, in his most instructive and masterly essay on the flora of Australia, says:--"Under whatever aspect I regard the flora of Australia and of New Zealand, I find all attempts to theorise on the possible causes of their community of feature frustrated by anomalies in distribution, such as I believe no two other similarly situated countries in the globe present.

Everywhere else I recognise a parallelism or harmony in the main common features of contiguous floras, which conveys the impression of their generic affinity, at least, being affected by migration from centres of dispersion in one of them, or in some adjacent country. In this case it is widely different. Regarding the question from the Australian point of view, it is impossible in the present state of science to reconcile the fact of Acacia, Eucalyptus, Casuarina, Callitris, &c., being absent in New Zealand, with any theory of transoceanic migration that may be adopted to explain the presence of other Australian plants in New Zealand; and it is very difficult to conceive of a time or of conditions that could explain these anomalies, except by going back to epochs when the prevalent botanical as well as geographical features of each were widely different from what they are now. On the other hand, if I regard the question from the New Zealand point of view, I find such broad features of resemblance, and so many connecting links that afford irresistible evidence of a close botanical connection, that I cannot abandon the conviction that these great differences will present the least difficulties to whatever theory may explain the whole case." I will now state, as briefly as possible, what are the facts above referred to as being of so anomalous a character, and there is little difficulty in doing so, as we have them fully set forth, with admirable clearness, in the essay above alluded to, and in the same writer's _Introduction to the Flora of New Zealand_, only requiring some slight modifications, owing to the later discoveries which are given in the _Handbook of the New Zealand Flora_.

Confining ourselves always to flowering plants, we find that the flora of New Zealand is a very poor one, considering the extent of surface, and the favourable conditions of {489} soil and climate. It consists of 1,085 species (our own islands possessing about 1,500), but a very large proportion of these are peculiar, there being no less than 800 endemic species, and thirty-two endemic genera.

Out of the 285 species not peculiar to New Zealand, no less than 215 are Australian, but a considerable number of these are also Antarctic, South American, or European; so that there are only about 100 _species_ absolutely confined to New Zealand and Australia, and, what is important as indicating a somewhat recent immigration, only some half-dozen of these belong to _genera_ which are peculiar to the two countries, and hardly any to the larger and more important Australian genera. Many, too, are rare species in both countries and are often alpines.

Far more important are the relations of the genera and families of the two countries. All the Natural Orders of New Zealand are found in Australia except three--Coriariae, a widely-scattered group found in South Europe, the Himalayas, and the Andes; Escallonieae, a widely distributed group; and Chloranthaceae, found in Tropical Asia, j.a.pan, Polynesia, and South America.

Out of a total of 310 New Zealand genera, no less than 248 are Australian, and sixty of these are almost peculiar to the two countries, only thirty-two however being absolutely confined to them.[127] In the three large orders--Compositae, Orchideae, and Gramineae, the genera are almost identical in the two countries, while the species--in the two former especially--are mostly distinct.