74 BOTANY OF THE 
whose botanical accuracy and acquaintance with the Floras 
of S. Europe, Madeira, and the Canaries, entitle us to place 
great reliance on the authenticity of the nomenclature. That 
gentleman has also favoured us with some notes on the 
Botany of Madeira, as compared with other neighbouring - 
islands, which we beg to acknowledge most heartily, and 
which are embodied in the following remarks. 
The Island of Madeira contains 672 species of flowering 
plants and Ferns, of which 85 are absolutely peculiar, and 
480 common to Europe; 280 are commón to Madeira and 
the Azores (whose Flora is estimated at 425 sp.) ; 312 (or 
probably more) to Madeira and the Canaries ; and 170 to the 
neighbourhood of Gibraltar (where 456 have been collected.) 
It is remarkable that out of 400 European, and these Me- 
diterranean species, indigenous to Madeira, not more than 170 
occur in Gibraltar: for it were natural to suppose that the 
majority of 480 species are very widely dispersed throughout 
the S. Europe, and must have migrated by way, as it were, of 
Gibraltar, if transported across the ocean to Madeira. It is 
further worthy of observation, that the Azores, though very fat 
to the westward, and the Canaries to the south, both contain 
many more of the Mediterranean plants seen in Madeira, than 
does Gibraltar. 
A considerable number of the Madeira plants belong 
to genera not found in the adjacent continent,* but in the 
Canaries, Azores, or Cape de Verd Islands; thus indicating 4 
botanical affinity between these groups and confined to them.f 
* Except, possibly, on the hitherto unexplored Atlas Mountains 0? 
the Morocco coast. 
+ The following are some of the leading features of the N. Atlantic 
Island Flora, as distinguishing it from the continental. 
1, Genera confined to the four groups, and represented in two or more of 
the islands, are :— sj š 
Melanoselinum, (Madeira and Azores .) 
Æoni : 
Piece }oMtadeira and Canaries.) 
Sinapidendron, (Madeira and Cape de Verd Islands.) 
