68 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 



the vegetation of the past, slight as it is, favours the opposite view. Fossil wood has been 

 found in the Crozets and Kerguelen ; and specimens brought from the latter island by Sir 

 Joseph Hooker and others were regarded by the late Dr Goeppert as being related to 

 Araucaria, and he named them Araucarites schleinitzii, and Araucarites hookeri. 



Juan Fernandez and Masafuera. — This little flora is as remarkable for what it does 

 not contain as for what it does contain. Apart from the CompositEe, mentioned above 

 under St Helena, the flora is essentially Chilian in character, a large proportion of the 

 endemic element being species of genera also represented in Chili; yet the large 

 characteristic Chilian genera of Leguruinosa?, Conipositse, Orchideee, &c, are entirely 

 absent from the islands. The Boragineous genus Selkirkia has, however, no great affinity 

 with any Chilian member of the order, and Lactoris is altogether an isolated type of a 

 tribe of Piperacese. 



Tlie South-eastern Moluccas. — So far as we know, the vegetation of these islands con- 

 tains only a very small endemic element, though larger than that in the Bermudas. Dr 

 Beccari, who has more thoroughly explored the botany of the Arrou Islands than Mr 

 Moseley was able to, describes it as exceedingly poor and wholly Papuan ; and he finds 

 evidence of a comparatively recent connection with New Guinea. 



The Admiralty Islands. — The fragment of the flora of this group on the extreme 

 western edge of Polynesia, collected by Mr Moseley, shows, as might be expected, that the 

 vegetation is intermediate in character between the Malayan and Polynesian. In Poly- 

 nesia, as elsewhere, the Compositae more particularly are perplexing to the botanical 

 geographer, for although they have their greatest affinities in America, as well as the sub- 

 arboreous Lobeliaceae, so numerous in the Sandwich Islands, yet the bulk of the vegetation 

 seems to have been derived from the Australo-Asiatic resrion. As suggested before, 

 perhaps the arboreous Composite are older than the other constituents of the vegetation. 

 The Australasian genus Metrosideros penetrates as far eastward as Pitcairn, where, as in 

 the Sandwich Islands, it forms large woods ; and the prominence of such other Australasian 

 or Asiatic genera in the Sandwich Islands as Pittosporum, Alphitonia, Cyathodes, Sccevola, 

 and Cyrtandra is noteworthy. On the other hand, the peculiar Sandwich Island types 

 seem to have had a former wider extension, as is indicated by the LobeHaceous arboreous 

 genus Sclerotheca and a species of Phyllostegia in Tahiti. 



