DR. O. STAPF ON THE FLORA OF MOUNT KINABALU, 93 
V, AFFINITIES. 
I place four tables at the end of the general part of my paper, one for each zone, 
showing the distribution of the species enumerated in the special part, with the excep- 
tion of the commonest weeds of the hill zone, in order to facilitate the review of the 
complex geographical relationships of the flora of Kinabalu. The reader will find some 
explanatory notes on the areas and the signs used by me at the head of the tables. In 
this place I wish only to mention that the areas as they are defined do not claim to be 
exactly phytogeographical divisions, although I have tried to conform them to the 
corresponding divisions as closely as I could without unduly multiplying them or 
impairing the clearness of the tables. The great number of endemic species, many 
of which are distinctly representative forms, led me to introduce the sign ~, 
indicating that a species is represented by a more or less closely allied form in another 
area. The same sign was further used in a few cases of non-endemic species, when they 
were represented outside their undoubted area by so closely allied forms that their 
specific autonomy seemed to me doubtful. 
I purposely placed Borneo in the middle of the tables and grouped the other areas to 
the right and left according to their position and distance east or west of Borneo. Thus 
a glance at the tables reveals at once several very remarkable facts, such as the great 
preponderance of the relations with the remainder of Malaya over those with Austro- 
Malaya and the Philippines, the considerable number of species—identical or repre- 
sentative—common to Kinabalu and the Himalaya region, and the comparatively large 
share of what we might call Austral-Antarctic elements. Yet a mere comparison of the 
arithmetical results derived from the tables would be greatly misleading in several 
important points concerning the affinities and the history of the flora. In fact any 
conclusions drawn from results obtained by tabulation must be subjected to a careful 
scrutiny before they become valid. The total area of the species and of the natural 
groups of which they are members, the grouping of the members of each group within 
their common area and their phylogenetic relations, the conditions which influence their 
spreading or their extermination, and the geological history of the corresponding part of 
the surface of the earth, are the most prominent points to bé considered. I need not 
point out how very little we know at present in regard to almost every one of these 
questions. However, I have tried to ascertain as much as I could from the splendid 
material at Kew and from literature, in a necessarily limited time, and I place the results 
before the reader in full consciousness of their incompleteness. They agree in many 
points with Hooker’s researches on the diffusion of Boreal types across the Archipelago 
to Australia and of Australian and Antarctic types in the reverse direction, in his classical 
Introductory Essay on the Flora of Tasmania, with the general outlines of the phyto- 
geography of Malaya as laid down in Engler's ‘ Versuch einer Entwicklungsgeschichte 
der Pflanzenwelt, and with Warburg's latest and important papers on certain parts of 
the Malayan flora, papers which have the invaluable advantage of being based on 
independent research. This coincidence makes me feel more confident than would be 
the case with a different result. 
SECOND SERIES.—BOTANY, VOL. IV. o 
