] INTRODUCTION. 
and a Chilian. From what has preceded it is evident that such a division would not 
satisfactorily indicate the leading features of the distribution of plants, as there are 
only two distinct elements, the andine and tropical, both represented at different altitudes 
in several of the provinces. A better botanical division is an Andean subregion 
(which merges into the North Mexican and Californian to the north and into the 
Antarctic in the south) and a Tropical subregion, both divisible into several provinces. 
In conclusion, reference may be made to a statistical account of the Andine Flora of 
Ecuador *, and to Mr. Ball’s recent work +, in which he suggests that the ancient 
mountains of Brazil formed a great centre of development of plant life. 
The Australasian Region. 
This includes the whole of Australia and the adjacent islands, which may be sub- 
divided into a south-western and a north-eastern subregion; and New Caledonia and 
New Zealand, which constitute other subregions. The remote connections with the 
American Andine flora are reviewed in the Appendix (vol. iv. p. 234), and in the 
description further on of the Antarctic Flora. Reasons for including New Caledonia 
and New Zealand in this region are given in the discussion of Drude’s botanical and 
Wallace’s zoological divisions of this part of the world}. It may be of interest to 
add here a few statistics of the vegetation of two or three definite areas of the 
Australasian region. 
Tasmania. (After Mueller §.) 
Orders. Genera. Species. 
Dicotyledones . . . . . 72 257 662 
Monocotyledones . . . . 15 99 272 
Gymnospermee . . . . . 1 7 ll 
88 363 945 
Extratropical South Australia. (After R. Tate ||.) 
Orders. Genera. Species. 
Dicotyledones . . . . . 78 365 * 1244 
Monocotyledones . .. . 16 113 322 
Gymnospermee . . . . . 2 2 3 
96 480 1569 
* Dressel, L., Charakteristik des eucadorianischen Pflanzenschatzes: Natur und Offenbarung, xxvii., 1881. 
Abstract in Just’s Bot. Jahresb. x. 1882, pp. 435-441, including a table of the number of species of each 
natural order. Cultivated or introduced plants appear to be counted with the others, as he has one Resedacee. 
+ ‘ Notes of a Naturalist in South America’ (1887), Chapter vi. 
+ See pp. xxxi and xxxvii. § Census of the Plants of Tasmania. 
|| Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Adelaide, 1880. 
