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at the base, and branching closely near their extremities into short leafy stems, bearing small, short, thick, coriaceous, smooth, green, scale-like, imbricating leaves. The root is a woody taproot, deeply descending, very slightly tapering, and of great length, but provided with comparatively few lateral rootlets. The flowers tire white and in small terminal heads. Veronica lievis is a small shiub 2 ft. to 4 ft. tall, or even more, of a rounded habit, made up of close-growing terete branches, which are semi-erect, quite leafless, and little branched below, but much-branching above into short, straight, flexible twigs, covered rather closely with patent or at times imbricating, bright-green, very thick, coriaceous, small leaves, and bearing numerous subterminal racemes or corymbs of lilac or white flowers. Sometimes the bushes are ball-like in shape; at others more open and straggling. The roots are extremely numerous, slender, and fibrous, and with the earth which they hold together form a " ball " when the plant is dug from the ground. It is an excessively variable plant, there being a great number of forms distinct in leaf and flower.* Some of the extreme forms are much unlike one another, and one especially closely resembles V. buxifolia. Veronica spathulata is a prostrate sub-shrub with numerous flexible decumbent stems, branching freely near their extremities, and forming a small close mat upon the ground, 1 ft. or frequently less in breadth. The leaves are small, soft, thick, and bright-green, but their colour is masked by a covering of small white hairs. The main root is of enormous length, and there are also many close and long but more slender adventitious roots from near the base of the stems. The flowers are so excessively numerous as to hide the leaves. They are white, large for size of plant, and in short few-flowered racemes near the ends of the shoots (Photo. No. 5). Veronica Hookeriana is a semi-prostrate suffruticose plant, forming small mats on the scoria, usually under shelter of rocks. The stems are long and prostrate at first, but give off many erect or semi-erect leafy branches, which bear numerous small, ovate to rotund, thick, fleshy, green, coriaceous, patent or sub-imbricating leaves, tin,l many few-flowered racemes of bright lilac flowers, having a purple ring above the throat and the corolla, and borne on stiff, erect, leafy stalks. The roots are long, and there are also many very slender adventitious roots. The peduncles, pedicels, and calyces are covered with numerous glandular hairs. Coprosma depressa is a prostrate shrub of the mat or semi-mat habit, made up of slender interlacing branches pressed closely to the ground, though under certain circumstances it is more upright. The leaves are numerous, very small, narrow, short, and rather thick, green or yellowishgreen, and glossy. The root is enormously long, stout and flexible, and has a few lateral rootlets. Coprosma cuneata is an erect or semi-erect closely branched shrub, 3 ft. or 4 ft., more or less, tall, with rigid, frequently interlacing branches covered with greyish or brown bark. The leaves are small, close-set on reduced branchlets, shining, dark-green, rigid, and coriaceous. The roots are thick, xvoody, flexible, and of great length. Coprosma repens is a suffruticose creeping plant which forms extensive matted patches on the surface of the ground. The branches are slender, prostrate, rooting, flexible, anil more or less herbaceous, t The leaves are very numerous, close-set, shining-green, thick, and coriaceous. The drupes are large, red, and succulent. Podocarpus nivalis is a closely branched and much-spreading shrub, usually of the mat or even cushion form. The branches are prostrate and rooting, and are provided with numerous erect or semi-erect leafy branchlets, furnished with many small, linear, hard, thick, and coriaceous green leaves, which are frequently turned to one side of the shoot-axis. The flowers are axillary and dioecious, and the fruit a nut seated on a fleshy, enlarged, bright-red peduncle. Phyllocladus alpinus is i, shrub or small tree, normally of regular pyramidal form, but usually of more or less open growth or forming a dense bush. The branches are numerous and stout, and finally give off many straight, very flexible, opposite branchlets, which are " leafless " for their lower half or third, then giving off cla.lode-beat ing stems. The cladodes, which exactly resemble leaves, are numerous, frequently arranged in threes, moderately close, patent or semi-vertical, pale-green with a slight yellowish tinge on upper surface, waxy beneath, giving a bluish tinge to under-surface, thick, coriaceous, brittle, oblong to rhomboid in shape, and variable in size. The flowers are moncecious. The seedlings have true leaves, narrow-linear in shape, and such are frequently borne on older plants as reversion-shoots. Daerydiuin laxifolium is a very low-growing shrub (Photo. No. 18), frequently forming a close mat or turf upon the ground, or tit times straggling amongst other plants or trailing over banks. The branches are flexible and i lerately stout, branching profusely, and becoming more and more slender until finally they are filiform and almost herbaceous. They are furnished at their extremities either with minute, fleshy, scale-like, imbricating leaves, or with longer and more distant, patent, linear, juvenile leaves. The leaves vary much in colour, and may be bright-green or even almost purple. The flowers are monoecious or dioecious. The -fruit is a nut, seated on a red, fleshy, swollen receptacle. The roots are long and deeply descending, while also numerous short and fibrous adventitious rootlets pass from the creeping stems. Dacrydium Bidwillii is a shrub of the open, or at times a small tree of the forest, furnished with numerous spreading branches, given off from a very short main trunk, and which in the open are more or less prostrate and rooting, thus giving rise to a wide-spreading flat- or round-topped low shrub of close habit. The leaves are dimorphic, the adult being only on the ultimate or subultimate flexible branchlets, each small final branch-System being dense and of a somewhat pyramidal habit. The adult leaves are very small, thick, coriaceous, scale-like, and bright-green; the juvenile are linear, patent, and in a spiral. The flowers are dioecious.

* There are two types of inflorescence, one (the true V. laevis of Bentham) with a corymbose inflorescence, and the other with the typical racemes of this section of the genus. Between these extremes are many intermediates. The form resembling V. buxifolia is very distinct from the average of the "species." It is of very low stature, and has extremely short, spike-like racemes. Probably it comes true from seed, as it occurs in many places distant from one another.