Physiographic.

Banks Peninsula, on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, is such a well-defined and isolated area that it is remarkable that it has not received more attention from botanists. The list of papers at the end of this article shows how scanty has been the botanical work done on this group of hills. Indeed, there is at present no reliable li t of the species occurring there. This is the more to be regretted as no portion of the area except the coastal cliffs and the salt marsh now remains in its original condition; and no doubt even on the cliffs some introduced species of plants are to be found. The complete destruction of the forest and the annual burning of the tussock areas have so altered the plant associations that it is difficult to reconstruct them, even in imagination, with accuracy. Some species are now undoubtedly lost, many more have been introduced from without, and the relative numbers of those present have been, of course, totally reproportioned. Any attempt to describe in detail the distribution of species over the area before the arrival of the white man must of necessity fail, but the rough outlines of that distribution can still be determined.

The following paper therefore attempts to give that information, and to provide a list of the indigenous species that should be useful to future students of the area. It is not necessary to describe the chief physiographic features of the area, as this has already been done in the papers of von Haast, Hutton, and Speight, which are readily accessible Suffice it to say that Banks Peninsula stretches out to the south-east from the centre of the eastern side of the Canterbury Plains. It is oval in shape, and about thirty-five miles long and twenty wide. It consists of a congeries of hills rising at the centre in Mount Herbert to a height of just over 3,000 ft., and in Mounts Sinclair and Fitzgerald to a slightly less height. From these and other peaks long ridges with steep sides run out in all directions, enclosing occasionally narrow flats containing several hundred acres of land. Beyond the flats and between the outer ridges are the smaller bays. On the seaward side the ridges terminate in cliffs 300 ft. to 500 ft. high; and on the landward side slope down to the plains, cliffs being absent. Two large harbours, on the sites of old volcanic calderas, break into the hills, and are surrounded by steep walls which rise in rocky cliffs and escarpments to the height of 2,000 ft. in Akaroa Harbour, and somewhat less in Lyttelton Harbour. The longest valleys are the Little River and Kaituna Valleys, each some seven miles in length, both at one time, throughout part at least of their lengths, arms of the sea. To the south-west lies a large, shallow, brackish mere—Ellesmere—formed by the blocking-up of the mouth of the Selwyn River. This action is due to the shingle drifted up the coast from the mouth of the Rakaia River by the southern current.