where abundant, furnishing their ordinary dress. Though the New-Zealanders surpassed their Polynesian relatives in the manufacture of textile fabrics, all their garments were hand-plaited, the loom and spinning-wheel, or even the distaff, being unknown. Besides these hand-plaited garments, cloaks worn only by persons of rank were made from the skins of dogs, the only domestic animal they possessed. When to these dress-stuffs are added bark cloth, the principal clothing material throughout Polynesia, and cinctures of leaves,* Polynesian Researches,” by W. Ellis. frequently the only covering worn by females, it will be seen that, though no section of the Maori race went habitually naked, their clothes were of the most primitive descriptions. They were, however, far in advance of the Australian aborigines and the Papuans, with whom they were mixed, few of these people wearing any clothing whatsoever, even their ornaments being scarce and extremely rude. II.—The Cultivated Plants Of Polynesia: Foreign Species. The great chain of islands that extends eastward from Sumatra along the equator as far as the Marquesas Group forms a zone of vegetation unparalleled in any other portion of the globe, the same climatic conditions prevailing throughout its whole length—more than eight thousand miles, or one-third of the earth's circumference. Excepting a few alpine forms, there is probably no species of plant found on any one portion of the line that would not grow on all other portions where it could find suitable soil wherein to fix its roots. Here, then, those agencies by which plants are disseminated over the earth (man included) have had a wide, unbroken field of operation, and in the varied distribution of the species throughout the region their effects are now visible. On examining this distribution we find that amongst the most widely distributed are the cultivated plants; but to this rule there are some marked exceptions, showing that the action of man as a distributing agency has been irregular or interrupted. Generally the stream of vegetation has been from west to east, though in a few instances the reverse is observable; but wherever cultivated plants of foreign origin are found history can be accurately determined—with one or two exceptions, they seem invariably to have entered at the western end of the chain. In the cultivated plants of the Polynesian islands, which form the eastern extremity of the great chain, we have a means of determining this easterly movement, or, in other words, the interchange of productions that has taken place between the inhabitants of the various