Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/7



Forty-two years have elapsed since Sir J. D. Hooker published the first part of his "Handbook of the New Zealand Flora." Although no complete 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 considerably 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 widespread 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.