original Flora, which was richer in number of species, strikes me as
EMINENTLY NEW AND IMPORTANT. I am not sure whether to me the discussion on
the New Zealand Flora is not even more instructive. I cannot too much
admire both. But it will require a long time to suck in all the facts.
Your case of the largest Australian orders having none, or very few,
species in New Zealand, is truly marvellous. Anyhow, you have now
DEMONSTRATED (together with no mammals in New Zealand) (bitter sneer No.
3), that New Zealand has never been continuously, or even nearly
continuously, united by land to Australia!! At page lxxxix, is the only
sentence (on this subject) in the whole essay at which I am much inclined
to quarrel, viz. that no theory of trans-oceanic migration can explain,
etc. etc. Now I maintain against all the world, that no man knows anything
about the power of trans-oceanic migration. You do not know whether or not
the absent orders have seeds which are killed by sea-water, like almost all
Leguminosae, and like another order which I forget. Birds do not migrate
from Australia to New Zealand, and therefore floatation SEEMS the only
possible means; but yet I maintain that we do not know enough to argue on
the question, especially as we do not know the main fact whether the seeds
of Australian orders are killed by sea-water.

The discussion on European Genera is profoundly interesting; but here alone
I earnestly beg for more information, viz. to know which of these genera
are absent in the Tropics of the world, i.e. confined to temperate regions.
I excessively wish to know, ON THE NOTION OF GLACIAL MIGRATION, how much
modification has taken place in Australia. I had better explain when we
meet, and get you to go over and mark the list.

...The list of naturalised plants is extremely interesting, but why at the
end, in the name of all that is good and bad, do you not sum up and comment
on your facts? Come, I will have a sneer at you in return for the many