It is not merely that twelve hundred miles of ocean separate the flat, rounded, massive-looking continent from the high, slender, irregular islands.

The ocean is deep and stormy.
Until the nineteenth century there was absolutely no going to and fro across it.

Many plants are found in both countries, but they are almost all small and not in any way conspicuous.

Only one bird of passage migrates across the intervening sea.

The dominating trees of Australia are myrtles (called eucalypts); those of New Zealand are beeches (called birches), and various species of pines.