xi, c, 4 Copeland: Natural Selection 169 



tion was paid to the possible disappearance of species in a place 

 where we had the advantage of possessing notes and herbaria 

 prepared in previous decades, the conclusion was reached that 

 five species, none of which had ever been other than strictly 

 local in those towns (by local, I mean confined to single small 

 areas, as single hill-sides or bogs), had been exterminated so 

 far as these towns were concerned. The conclusion reached 

 was: 



It is a most instructive lesson in the survival of what exists that above 

 thirteen-fourteenths of the native habitat has been altogether changed in 

 character, and the other one-fourteenth decidedly modified, without the 

 extinction of a single common forest herb, shrub, or tree. 



The chief factor modifying conditions in Ceylon is surely 

 agriculture. With its advance, the existence of the species 

 restricted to such land as is demanded for agriculture must at 

 least be jeopardized. It is hardly possible that there are not 

 during each decade some species lowered in the scale of common- 

 ness by clearing and cultivation. The most conspicuous victims 

 of the advance of agriculture are those trees that grow on land 

 of agricultural value. The dominant forest trees of this kind 

 of land throughout the far eastern tropics are the dipterocarps. 

 I have already shown one reason for the rarity of the species 

 of Doona and Stemonoporus. It seems to me hardly doubtful 

 that the development of agriculture in Ceylon has materially 

 decreased the commonness of these and the species of other 

 dipterocarp genera, and that the existence of some of these trees 

 in the near future will depend upon their deliberate protection 

 by men. Among the peculiarities of the flora of Java, the most 

 outstanding single peculiarity, as compared with that of Borneo, 

 Sumatra, Banca, the Malay Peninsula, or the Philippines, is the 

 limited number of dipterocarps. While seventy-five are known 

 in the Malay Peninsula, and more than one hundred from Borneo, 

 while scantily explored Sumatra has yielded more than thirty, 

 and the Philippines at least seventy-five, Java, botanically better 

 known than any other of these regions, possesses only twelve 

 known species outside of cultivation. 



The unquestionable explanation of this extreme scarcity of 

 dipterocarps lies in the use for agriculture of the part of Java 

 suited to dipterocarp forest. It may be that they were never 

 as numerous in Java as in Borneo or even in Sumatra ; but that 

 Java contained less species than Banca is incredible. Is it to be 

 supposed that the factors which have cut the dipterocarp species 

 of Java to twelve, while leaving Java with a flora vastly richer 



