V.—Miscellaneous.

Art. LIV.—Some Remarks upon the Distribution of the Organic Productions of New Zealand. By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. [Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 15th August, 1883.] In the course of last year's proceedings of this Society I brought under its notice some remarks upon the distribution of the land and wading birds found within the New Zealand zoological sub-region.* Trans. N.Z. Inst., xv., pp. 178 to 187. Whilst engaged in preparing the paper in which I treated of this subject, I was struck with the fact that the fauna and flora of the main islands of New Zealand present features very similar to those which so much impressed the late Mr. Darwin in connection with the organic products of the Galipagos Islands. That group, as you are aware, is situated under the equator, within five or six hundred miles from the western coast of America. None of the islands composing it are large, and all consist of volcanic rocks of recent origin. The group was first systematically examined by Mr. Darwin during the visit of the “Beagle” in 1835, and he tells us that, seeing that most of its organic products were aboriginal creations, occurring nowhere else, he felt, in viewing them, that both in space and in time he seemed to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth. He points out, however, that notwithstanding this dissimilarity, all the organic products of the islands in question showed a marked relationship to those of America, and he concluded, therefore, that whilst the group looked almost like a world of itself, it could only be considered as a satellite of the great continent, whence it had evidently derived a few stray colonists, and had received the general character of its indigenous productions. But the feature which most impressed him in considering these productions, was, that notwithstanding the general proximity of the several islands to each other, each of them possessed species, both of birds and plants, which were not to be found upon any of the others. As a striking example of this, in the case of the birds, he mentions that each of the three species of mocking-thrush which he found there was peculiar to a particular island or to some particular sub-group of the archipelago, and he adds, that although his attention was not soon enough called to the fact to enable him to determine whether the same rule prevailed in relation to a singular group