IN THE NORTH AND SOUTM. 373 



geographical distribution, that I am strongly inclined to 

 trust in it : but I will first give the facts which demand an 

 explanation. 



In South America, Dr. Hooker has shown that besides many 

 closely allied species, between forty and fifty of the flower- 

 ing plants of Tierra del Fuego, forming no inconsiderable 

 part of its scanty flora, are common to North America and 

 Europe, enormously remote as these areas in opposite hemi- 

 spheres are from each other. On the lofty mountains of 

 equatorial America a host of peculiar species belonging to 

 European genera occur. On the Organ Mountains of Brazil 

 some few temperate European, some antarctic, and some 

 Andean genera were found by Gardner which do not exist 

 in the low intervening hot countries. On the Silla of Carac- 

 cas the illustrious Humboldt long ago found species belonging 

 to genera characteristic of the Cordillera. 



In Africa, several forms characteristic of Europe, and some 

 few representatives of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope, 

 occur on the mountains of Abyssinia. At the Cape of Good 

 Hope a very few European species, believed not to have been 

 introduced by man, and on the mountains several representa- 

 tive European forms, are found which have not been discov- 

 ered in the inter-tropical parts of Africa. Dr. Hooker has 

 also lately shown that several of the plants living on the 

 upper parts of the lofty island of Fernando Po, and on the 

 neighboring Cameroon Mountains, in the Gulf of Guinea, are 

 closely related to those on the mountains of Abyssinia, and 

 likewise to those of temperate Europe. It now also appears, 

 as I hear from Dr. Hooker, that some of these same temper- 

 ate plants have been discovered by the Rev. R. T. Lowe on 

 the mountains of the Cape Verde Islands. This extension 

 of the same temperate forms, almost under the equator, 

 across the whole continent of Africa and to the mountains 

 of the Cape Verde archipelago, is one of the most astonish- 

 ing facts ever recorded in the distribution of plants. 



On the Himalaya, and on the isolated mountain ranges of 

 the. peninsula of India, on the heights of Ceylon and on the 

 volcanic cones of Java, many plants occur either identically 

 the same or representing each other, and at the same time 

 representing plants of Europe not found in the intervening 

 hot lowlands. A list of the genera of plants collected on the 

 loftier peaks of Java, raises a picture of a collection made 

 on a hillock in Europe. Still more striking is the fact that 

 peculiar Australian forms are represented by certain planU 



