INTRODUCTION. xl vii 
Conspicuous among orders absent from the African region are the Cupulifere *, the 
characteristic order of trees of the northern region, and hardly less so of the mountains 
of tropical Asia (extending southward to New Guinea, though not south of the Ganges 
in Western India), and of the mountains of Mexico and Central America, extending 
nearly to the equator (Quercus), reappearing both in the American and Australasian 
regions in the extreme south (Fagus). Other notable orders or tribes unrepresented in 
the African region are:—Magnoliacee, Acerinee (Maples), Pomacee, Hydrangez, 
Cornaceze, Caprifoliacee, Vacciniacese, Rhodoracee (Rhododendron), and Abietines. 
There is also a very much smaller development of such essentially tropical orders as 
the Myrtacez, Aroidex, and Palme than in either the Indian or the South-American 
region. On the other hand, the northern genus Erica, which covers thousands of 
square miles in Europe with very few species, is represented by hundreds of species 
in a comparatively small area in South Africa. Such anomalies occur in nearly 
all Floras: take the genera Ranunculus, Epilobium, and Veronica in New Zealand, 
for instance, where combined they constitute eight or nine per cent. of the flowering 
plants. 
The Indian Region. 
This, it is assumed, should include the whole of Wallace’s “ Oriental” zoological 
region and those portions of his Australasian region indicated in a previous paragraph 
(p. xxxvil), and Western Polynesia. Indeed the whole of Polynesia, except the Sand- 
wich Islands, might be included. It is not intended to discuss the subdivision of this 
region, as the collection and examination of the data would involve great labour. New 
Guinea and some of the adjacent islands to the west, and those eastward to the Fiji group, 
constitute a distinct subprovince. Whether the remainder of the Malayan Archipelago 
should, with the Malayan Peninsula and Cochin China, all be included in one subpro- 
vince is not quite so certain. Some parts are exceedingly rich in endemic species and 
proportionately in genera, while others, the Philippines for example, are remarkably 
poor in endemic generic types, for only six genera in upwards of 1000 are endemic. 
It is here, too, that the highest proportion exists of monocotyledons to dicotyledons 
in any Flora of considerable extent of. which there are available statistics, it being as 
1 to 157+. Further materials will probably modify these figures, though not perhaps 
to any great extent. 
Miquel records some statistics { of the Flora of the Malayan Archipelago, but as he 
took a much more restricted view of genera and species, especially of the latter, than 
the other authorities cited, they will only serve for approximate comparisons. The twelve 
natural orders most numerous in species are:—1, Leguminose, 676 ; 2, Orchidee, 616 ; 
* Even in the wide sense of Bentham and Hooker, for although the European Alnus glutinosa is now widely 
spread in South Africa, it is perhaps beyond doubt that it was introduced by man. 
+ BR. A. Rolfe in Journ. Linn. Soc. xxi. p. 292. 
t ‘Flora Indie Batave,’ iii. p. 768. 
