Do you feel sure about the similar absence in the Sandwich group?
Is it not opposed quite to the case of Teneriffe and Madeira, and Mediterranean Islands?
I had fancied that T.del Fuego had possessed a large alpine flora! I should much like to know whether the climate of north New Zealand is much more insular than Tasmania.

I should doubt it from general appearance of places, and yet I presume the flora of the former is far more scanty than of Tasmania.

Do tell me what you think on this point.

I have also been particularly interested by all your remarks on variation, affinities, etc.: in short, your book has been to me a most valuable one, and I must have purchased it had you not most kindly given it, and so rendered it even far more valuable to me.
When you compare a species to another, you sometimes do not mention the station of the latter (it being, I presume, well-known), but to non-botanists such words of explanation would add greatly to the interest--not that non-botanists have any claim at all for such explanations in professedly botanical works.

There is one expression which you botanists often use (though, I think, not you individually often), which puts me in a passion--viz., calling polleniferous flowers "sterile," as non-seed-bearing.