hole, very little damage was done
to the natural products of the islands by the Maoris. "It was with the
advent of the Europeans," says Mr. John Drummond, F.L.S., in his
interesting and well-illustrated book on 'The Animals of New Zealand,'
"that destruction began in earnest. It seemed as if they had been
commanded to destroy the ancient inhabitants." They killed right and
left, and, in addition, burnt up the primaeval forests and bushes till
a great part of the flora was consumed. It was never a very varied or
strong one, consisting only of some 1,400 species, which are now in
large proportion vanishing, whilst 600 species of plants, most of them
introduced accidentally rather than intentionally by the European
settlers, have taken their place.

Here I may state the great principle which, in regard to plants as
well as animals, determines the survival of intruders from one region
to another. It appears that setting aside any very special and
peculiar adaptations to quite exceptional conditions in a given area,
the living things, whether plants or animals, which are brought to or
naturally arrive at such an area, survive and supplant the indigenous
plants and animals of that area, if they themselves are kinds
(species) produced or formed in a larger or more variegated area; that
is to say, formed under severer conditions of competition and of
struggle with a larger variety of competitors, enemies and adverse
circumstances in general. Thus, the plants of remote oceanic islands
are destroyed, and their place and their food are taken by the more
hardy "capable" plants of Continental origin. And, in accordance with
the same principle, as Darwin especially maintained, the plants of the
northern hemisphere, produced as they are in a wide stretching belt
of land--Europe, temperate Asia, and North America--always push their
way down the great southern stretches of land (by cool mountain
roadways), and when they have arrived in the temperate regions of the
southern hemisphere, they have at various geological epochs starved
out, taken the place of, or literally "supplanted" the native southern
flora, which in every case has been formed on a narrow, restricted and
peninsula-like area. The same greater "potency" of the animals of the
Holartic region has in the past established them as intruders into
South America, Ethiopia and India, and has led to the inevitable
survival of the animal of the large area when brought into contact
w