DR. O. STAPF ON THE FLORA OF MOUNT KINABALU. 113 
plants of any kind among them, whilst the coniospermous element consists of 37:5 
per cent., leaving thus almost two thirds of the bog and rock plants without any particular 
“means of dispersion.” Among the coniospermous bog plants, Drosera, Utricularia, 
and Eriocaulon are types rather indifferent to temperature. They would—and certainly 
do—succeed in settling in any boggy or generally wet spot between the highest point 
where they were collected and the coast. There is, in the coast region, certainly ample 
opportunity for their spreading over wide areas by wind or by birds, even under the 
present conditions. Birds are sometimes, as we know from well-established facts, a very 
efficient agency so far as the dispersion of bog, marsh, or swamp plants is concerned, the 
seeds easily sticking with mud to their legs or clinging to their plumage. In a similar 
position are most sedges—or perhaps all with the exception of Carex fusiformis and 
C. hypsophila, which seem to be true high-level plants, and probably also Haloragis 
micrantha. If we deduct all these plants there remain still about 20 species, belonging 
either to the rock or bog formation, for the dispersion of which we cannot account by 
merely referring to the general conditions as they at present exist. Four or five of them 
are coniospermous, but among them is only one non-endemic species (Aletris foliolosa). 
The rest have small seeds or fruits, but certainly not small or light enough to be carried 
a considerable distance by wind. These fruits or seeds may, of course, be occasionally 
scattered by birds or mammals, by water or landslips, &c., but there is, to my know- 
ledge, no agency whatever operating on Kinabalu to bring about in this way an exchange 
with those regions where these species or their nearest congeners are found. 
VIII, SUGGESTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF THE FLORA OF KINABALU, 
I hope to have shown in the preceding section that the composition of the flora of 
Kinabalu points most emphatically to a time when the conditions of plant-dispersion 
were very different from what they are now. The principal circumstances which 
prevent the exchange of the primary highland flora of Kinabalu with other floras 
at present are the absence of birds or mammals, which might be the active means of the 
exchange, and the isolation of the highland. But,as the absence of such animals itself 
is evidently a consequence of this isolation, we are forced to the conclusion that there 
must have been a time when this isolation of Mount Kinabalu did not exist. There 
are two kinds of changes which might put an end to the isolation of the mountain and its 
flora. One is a great climatic change such as would compel the highland flora to descend 
into the hill zone and the plains. It would account for very much ; yet there is no 
evidence that anything of this kind ever has occurred, although a slight depression 
of the lines of vegetation of many plants may have taken place. The other change 
is in the distribution of land and water. If Kinabalu once was in immediate connection 
with the highland of New Guinea, or what was then its equivalent, the presence of 
many of the Austral-Antarctic types in the Kinabalu flora would become intelligible. 
A similar connection with continental Eastern Asia would account for the Boreal and 
Circumpacific types, and a union of the Malayan islands for the preponderance 
of the Indo-Malayan element. A negative shifting of the shore-line to the extent of 
