6 or 7 years ago.

D^r Lyall has sent a splendid collection from the Southern & middle Island,¹ without a single new Fern: he is on his way home, with, I expect, a fine lot of phenogamic plants.²

There are 4 or 5 genera of flowering Plants in N.Z. so large (for an Island where all the genera are small) & so disgustingly Protean, that I am again reconsidering old Bory de Vincents dictum as to the variability of Insular species—³ Some of these genera are peculiar to New Zealand, others to itself & Australia; & others still are mundane to an excessive degree, as Oxalis & Epilobium.— Of the Oxalis there are really but 2 New Zeald. species in all—⁴

1) O. Magellanica common to N. Zeald, V D Land⁵ & Fuegia—long known under the 3 names of lactea (in V.DL.)—Catareactæ (in N Zeald) & Magellanica in Fuegia—all scarce plants in Herbaria, insufficiently described in books & being from very widely sundered localities no one ever supposed them the same.

The other is O. corniculata, the commonest & most variable plant in the whole world perhaps— Cunningham⁶ however was no Botanist,—he made 8 species of this one unfortunate!, never dreaming that it was a plant found elsewhere, in any of its Protean forms. Now had Cunningham not preceded me, I should never have noted this genus as favouring Bory’s views, & as it is I fear that in doing so I am more swayed by the fact of its having deceived another, than by a just appreciation of its real value—

Take another genus, Alseuosmia—peculiar to the Island— I should never have dreamt of making above 3 species of it.⁷ Cunningham makes 8.— A third, Coprosma, is almost peculiar to N. Zeald & for the life of me I do not know how to draw the line between there being only one species, or 28.!—⁸ it covers the country in every form of herb, bush & Tree, from sea to Mt top.—but it is no worse than Rubus, Willow, or Rosa over Gt Britain⁹ & on the whole I ignore Borys theory.— Generally speaking the N. Zeald species are as well or better marked than the Europæan—or the Australian—where Eucalyptus & various other genera are not to be surpassed in protean dispositions. For the rest recent discoveries rather tend to ally the N. Zeald. Flora with the Australian—though there is enough affinity with Extratropical S. Am. to be very remarkable & far more than can be accounted for by any known laws of migration— I am becoming slowly more convinced of the probability of the southern flora being a fragmentary one—all that remains of a great Southern Continent.¹⁰ A second species of the otherwise strictly great S. American genus Calceolaria has turned up in N. Zealand,¹¹ & of the two only genera of N. Zeald Leguminosae, one, a tree, (Edwardsia) is common to Chili & N. Zeald & to no other countries. The other is confined to N.Z. & allied to nothing.¹² Several of the truly wild grasses are Europæan I think, & yet not found in Australia!.

My wife joins in best regards

Ever dear Darwin Yrs | Jos D Hooker.

P.S. I have been reading Owen upon Lyell in the Q^ly. & am sick of it & from it.¹³