554 MR. G. BENTHAM ON COMPOSITA. 
common ones. Blumea has in Australia three endemic and four 
common Asiatic species, Glossogyne two endemic and one common 
species, Centipeda one endemic and one common species ; and the 
ten Asiatic or general tropical genera, Saussurea (a Northern 
genus extending into tropical Asia), Vernonia, Elephantopus, 
Adenostemma, Conyza, Spheranthus, Siegesbeckia, Spilanthes, En- 
hydra, and Gynura, have each one or two species in Australia 
identical with wide-spread Asiatic ones, without any endemie 
congeners. The connexion in these cases is geographically not a 
very widely dissevered one considering the comparative vicinity 
of Timor, where outlying representatives of many truly Australian 
races are to be found. 
The singular and hitherto inexplieable connexion between 
Australia and the Mediterranean region exemplified in Gypso- 
phila, Nitraria, Trigonella, and some other herbaceous genera has 
no example in Composite; for that of the Leuzea australis, Gaudich. 
(which we have now thought it better to transfer to the section 
Rhaponticum of Centaurea), may have passed through a different 
channel. The species nearest approaching to it is a Spanish one ; 
but it is also allied in many respects to a small group of large- 
headed Centaureas represented by two species in Abyssinia, one 
in North America, and four or five in Chile; and this connexion 
may therefore be similar to that remote mountain connexion 
between Victoria and Tasmania, on the one hand, and the high 
northern regions on the other, observable in Anemone, Arabis, 
Oxalis, &e., but which is otherwise unknown in Composite. 
Insular Regions. 
The detached islands scattered over the ocean show each one 
or each group so much of an endemic character in their Com- 
posite, that they can scarcely in this respect be distributed into 
regions as Grisebach has attempted in a general way. It appears 
to me to be more instructive to consider them separately in the 
following order :—In the Pacific Ocean: 1,the Sandwich Islands; 
2, the Galapagos; 3, Juan Fernandez, Masafuera, &c.; 4, the South- 
Sea Islands. In the Atlantie: 5, the Atlantie group (the Azores, 
Canaries, and Cape-Verd Islands); 6, St. Helena and Tristan 
d'Acunba. In the Indo- Australian seas: 7, the Mascarene islands 
(Madagascar, Mauritius, and Bourbon); 8, New Caledonia ; and 9, 
New Zealand. In all, the general features of insular floras are 
more or less illustrated also by their Composite—viz. a large pro- 
