49 
others, Didiscus has been recorded from Mt. Scratchley in the south-east, 
and the Platanthera from the south-west. 
The presence of the other plants must be due to wind-incidence, and they 
would be derived from natural exposed areas above the tree-level on the 
mountains of greater altitude to the east and south of the country, 
The cryptogams, again, as is the case on the marsh, are all cosmopolitan. 
This remarkable ridge association of Koebré combines some of the most 
peculiar elements of what have been considered the Malayan, Polynesian, 
and Australian floras. 
The plants found there show roughly what the systematic enumeration 
of the species collected proves in detail, that the flora of the mountains of 
New Guinea, almost unknown outside the last ten years, must now be 
considered the axle of a wheel of distribution, of which the spokes alone have 
so fur been familiar to us. This is in agreement with all recent work at 
similar or greater altitudes. Had that axle, even now barely investigated, 
been worked out first, we would, as a matter of course, speak of the 
dominance of Papuan elements in neighbouring floras as the German and 
Dutch botanists have already rightly suggested. © 
SOME PLANT ASSOCIATIONS OF THE N.W. COAST. 
Dorei Bay. 
The chief plant association of Dorei Bay is that of the “korang” forest 
. clothing the low coral-limestone range which rises immediately behind Mano- 
koeari to the height of about 500’, in a gradual slope from the sea-shore. 
This forest is still in its pristine condition, as all the surface-water drains 
through the sterile and porous subsoil, to a certain level line, about 200’ 
above the beach, which marks the issue of the small streams representing the 
drainage of the ridge. This line also limits possible cultivation, as below it 
the “korang” is covered with sufficient depth of soil, due mostly to the 
erosive action of these streams, to allow of necessary but not luxuriant 
cultivation. 
The old “ pisang”?! plantations of the Alfueros, now run to seed, with 
secondary jungle upgrowth, abut on to the natural forest at this level, on 
which both the reservoirs collecting for the water-supply of Manokoeari are 
situated at different points. 
The peculiarities of this “korang” forest were noted by Forrest in 1750 
(1, 111), who wrote “there being no underwood it is easy travelling under 
the lotty trees”; and Dumont d’Urville in 1827 (3, iv. 581) estimated the trees 
in the forest as 80-200! high, eee of a “ sol dégagé, arbrisseaux clairsemés, 
“1. Banana, 
