566 . MR. G. BENTHAM ON COMPOSITA. 
ones. It further shows insular characteristics in another point, 
the tendency to a tall shrubby or arborescent form of several 
of the endemic or prevailing genera. 
The connexions of the Mascarene endemic Composite are emi- 
nently with the southern and subtropical African races, espe- 
cially those of Madagascar itself; the more tropical races, Plu- 
cheinex &c., may be rather more of an Asiatic type. A slight 
Australian character is shown in Centauropsis, Henricia, Ptero- 
caulon, Helichrysum, and Athrixia, the last two, and possibly 
Henricia, belonging to groups common to South Africa and Aus- 
tralia; the other two genera are more tropical; Pterocaulon is 
Australasian and South-American, but not Asiatic. Centauropsis, 
of two species, is represented only by two monotypes, Adenoon in 
the East-Indian peninsula and Pleurocarpea in tropical Australia. 
8. New Caledonia. 
This island was not included above among those of the South 
Pacific on account of the rather more Australian character of its 
Composite. Its vegetable statistics, however, are very much in 
arrear. We have no New-Caledonian Flora; the rich materials 
accumulated of late years, «specially in the Paris herbarium, have 
only been very partially worked up. Messrs. Brongniart and Gris 
have published chiefly the most remarkable among the shrubby 
and arborescent orders and genera, which, as the chief representa- 
tives of the ancient indigenous races, have of course the greatest in- 
terest in a phytogeographical point of view. The Composite have 
not been touched; and I am not aware that De Candolle’s ‘ Pro- 
dromus’ contains any more than the three species published by 
Labillardiére in his ‘Sertum. On a hasty glance with Dr. 
Hooker some years since over the Parisian collection, it appeared 
to us that there were about thirty species of Composite, at least 
half of them widely spread weeds of the tropical-Asiatic or Indo- 
Australian region, including Ageratum, Eclipta, Siegesbeckia, Xan- 
thium, &c. These were accompanied by a Vittadinia, two or three 
species of Pterocaulon (Monenteles), two or three of Helichrysum 
(or Cassinia ?), one or two of Gnaphalium, a Wedelia (Wollasto- 
nia), and a Glossogyne, of which the three former genera have more 
of an Australian than an Asiatic character, the three latter be- 
longing to both countries; and several of these species may prove 
to be endemic; but we saw nothing, nor have [ met elsewhere 
