Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/245

] the last-named group with which we have compared this Flora, are the preponderance of Rubiaceæ, Araliaceæ, Epacrideæ, Orchideæ, and Myrsineæ; the small amount of surface occupied by Compositæ, Caryophylleæ, Cruciferæ, and Ericeæ; and the entire want of Saxifrageæ, Leguminosæ, Labiatæ, and Amentaceæ, all scantily represented in New Zealand. The more striking points of difference are the increased proportion of Monocotyledones, which are there as 1:3.2, and in these two islands as 1:1.8; of grasses, which bear a proportion there to other flowering plants of 1:13, and here of 1:6.8; and of Compositæ, which there appear as 1:8, and as 1:4.4 here. This Flora further departs from that of New Zealand in possessing none of its numerous species of pine or beech, of which latter genus five are now known to grow there, and this is the more remarkable because all the beeches and several of the pines are alpine, both in New Zealand and in Van Diemen's Land, only reaching the level of the sea in the southern parts of those islands. The pines of the southern hemisphere are, however, exceedingly local, nor are they so antarctic as some of those in the northern hemisphere are arctic. Of the ten New Zealand species it is not certain that more than two or three are natives of the middle island, or that any of them are peculiar