ON BOTANICAL COLLECTIONS FROM CHRISTMAS ISLAND. 351 
REPORT ow THE BOTANICAL COLLECTIONS FROM CHRISTMAS 
Isranp, Indian Ocean, made by Captain J. P. Maclear, 
Mr. J. J. Lister, and the Officers of H.M.S. ‘ Egeria. By 
W. Borring Hemstxy, A.L.S. 
(Read 21st March, 1889.] 
Tue principal facts in the present Report have already appeared 
elsewheve—some in one place, some in another*; but it has 
nevertheless been thought desirable to bring them together and 
give a complete list of the plants collected, with their general dis- 
tribution, similar in form to the reports on the floras of various 
islands prepared by me for the Botany of the * Challenger’ Expe- 
dition, and to that I contributed to the Society's Journal on the 
Vegetation of Diego Garcia f. 
The island now under consideration should not be confounded 
with auother of the same name situated near the equator in mid- 
Pacific. It lies about 200 miles south of the western end of Java, 
from which it is separated by a depth of 2450 fathoms; and the 
Keeling group, 500 miles to the westward, are the nearest islauds. 
The formation appears to be chiefly of coral-limestone, rising 
in a succession of almost perpendicular cliffs and terraces to an 
altitude of nearly 1200 feet, and covered almost everywhere with 
a dense entangled vegetation, including gigantie buttressed trees 
from 100 to 170 feet high. In shape the island is irregularly 
four-sided, and some twelve miles in its greatest diameter. Neither 
running nor stagnant water was found ; yet, from the luxuriant 
vegetation, the rainfall must be considerable and rain frequent. 
Captain Wharton quotes largely from an account furnished him 
by Captain Aldrich, the Commander of the ‘Egeria’; and both 
he and Mr. Lister specially mention large trees. Among the 
largest are Inocarpus edulis and a species of Eugenia, which we 
have not been able to match with any species in the Kew Her- 
barium, and have not ventured to deseribe as new, because so 
* Captain J. P. Maclear in ‘ Nature, xxxvi. p.13; W. T. Thiselton Dyer in 
‘Nature,’ xxxvi. p. 78, and xxxviii. p. 415 (Address, Section D, Brit. Assoc, 
1888); J. J. Lister in ‘ Nature,’ xxxvii. p. 203; and Captain J. L. Wharton in 
‘Proceedings of the Geographical Society, 1888, pp. 613-624. And at a 
Meeting of the Zoological Society of London on the 4th of December, 1888, ^ 
paper by Mr. Lister was read giving a general account of the natural history o 
Christinas Island 
t Vol. xxii. pp. 332-340. 
