94 DR. O. STAPF ON THE FLORA OF MOUNT KINABALU. 
1 think it expedient, for the discussion to which this paragraph is devoted, to divide the 
plants represented in the collections from Kinabalu into three sets: (1) ¿he flora of the 
hill zone (with the exception of the weeds), (2) the flora of the primary forest above 
3000 feet and of the bush of the summit zone, and (3) the flora of the bogs and rocks. 
A. THE FLORA OF THE HILL ZONE. 
The three most powerful agencies which cause in the present, and, so to say, before our 
eyes, important changes in the natural associations of plants in the Malay Archipelago, 
reducing or exterminating on one side and giving place to new settlers on the other, are 
the slow but steady advance of the coast-line wherever it is skirted by a mangrove belt, 
volcanic eruptions, and the clearing of the land from the primary vegetation by man; the 
last certainly the most extensive of the three causes. It is the only one which comes 
under consideration in this paragraph. The history of the plateau of Diéng and of the 
lowland of Balabuan in Java are instances of the comparative rapidity with which 
cultivated land may be recovered so completely by the most luxuriant forest growth that 
we should take it for primeval forest never disturbed by man, but for historical proofs of 
theirage. The replacement does not always take place, and it is probably in many cases 
more or less incomplete. So far as Kinabalu is concerned, I have no indication that the 
clearings extended at any time much beyond what I have called the hill zone. This 
part of the country, however, seems to be kept in a perpetual state of secondary forest or 
of “ young jungle” by the constant shifting of the cultivated area. No wonder that 
not only a number of weeds which generally follow man in this part of the tropics have 
found their way into the country, but also other elements which spread easily and are 
more adapted to the peculiar conditions of cleared land, as the increase of light, the 
decrease of moisture, the reduced stability of the climate, &e. This must ultimately 
ehange the individual character of the local floras, the more so the longer it acts, 
and replace it by a more general character. Poor as the collection of the hill zone is, it 
nevertheless bears out this deduction. Twenty-one species, or 50 per cent., are common 
throughout the greater part of Tropical Asia, not a few of them extending at the same 
time to Australia. To these may be added four or five of the endemic species of this 
zone on account of their close affinity to so widely-distributed elements. Fourteen 
other species, or 33 per cent., have a more limited range of distribution ; but this covers 
still the whole of Malaya in eight cases, whilst the species are replaced in West Malaya 
(outside of Borneo) by representative forms in six cases. Three other endemic species 
are more individualized, but still distinctly Malayan elements. The only species 
which remain are Brookea albicans and Scyphostegia borneensis. Brookea is a genus 
hitherto found exclusively in North Borneo, having no distinct affinities in the Old 
x World floras, and being doubtfully related to a Brazilian genus. The genus Seypho- 
. stegia is endemic on Kinabalu and still more isolated, systematically as well as 
geographically. Thus the character of the hill-zone flora is to almost 60 per cent. 
generally Indo-Malayan and otherwise Malayan, but slightly imbued with a local 
shading due to the presence of a few endemic species, most of which have no very marked 
dede 
