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BOTANICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE AZORES. 83 
ing a woody plant in the agricultural zone, to say whether 
it is spontaneous or introduced. 
More evidently than is the case with the Canary Islands,* 
the endemic flora of the Azores appears to be undergoing a 
gradual reduction, partly because of the utilization of all 
available land for agricultural purposes. In some of the 
islands, even the high-lying pasture lands are being re- 
stocked with forage plants from the European and Ameri- 
can continents, in the belief that they are more valuable 
than those native to the islands; but, as a rule, such 
changes as are taking place above the zone of cultivation 
are fought out on the lines of the survival of the fittest. 
Near the sea level, however, where every square foot of 
tillable ground is utilized for the cultivation of food crops, 
the greater number of species met with are cosmopolitan 
weeds,f evidently of comparatively recent introduction, 
which here, as elsewhere, exist and spread because of their 
ability to live in crannies or by the roadside, and to flower 
and seed precociously and abundantly. Next the sea, and on 
the omnipresent stone walls and in the most recent vol- 
canic debris, species found elsewhere in similar situations 
are thoroughly at home, scarcely being interfered with by 
cultivated plants or the usual field and roadside weeds; but 
it is observable that the plants of this description that are 
peculiar to the islands for the most part are of very re- 
stricted distribution, localities such as they affect being in 
large part occupied by plants common to other parts of the 
world, almost compelling the inference that even here the 
native species are being crowded aside, and in time will give 
place to the invaders. 
A little over one hundred years ago the first printed 
account of the botany of the Azores seems to have been 
published by Forster, and at about the same time, from the 
* Morris, The plants and gardens of the Canary Isles. Journ. Roy. 
Hort. Soc. 19: 65. 
+ Ona similar condition in Madeira, see Yate Johnson’s Madeira, 3d 
ed. 225. 
