New Zealand Plants and their Story
[introduction]
Lying isolated from neighbouring land-masses far out in the broad Pacific, New Zealand offered conditions for plant-life different from those of most other regions. Its area, greater by far than that of any oceanic group of islands, is sufficient to have allowed the development of a rich vegetation made up of many species. The land of the "Maori and Moa," as a poet has called our land, has long been famous from both the ethnological and zoological standpoints. The remarkable race of aborigines, with their interesting manners and customs, is known far and wide. Scientific men the world over, and many of the general public, for that matter, have an acquaintance more or less intimate with the giant birds of a former age, and their fast-vanishing relatives, the kiwis of to-day.
Fig. 1.—The Chatham Island Forget-me-not (Myosotidimn nobile), growing near sea in north of Chatham Island. [Photo, L. Cockayne.