4 o SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



Christmas Island 1 is situated about 200 miles off the 

 west coast of Java, from which it is separated by a sea 

 bottom some 14,500 feet deep. It is about twelve miles 

 across in its greatest diameter ; rises to an altitude of 

 1 200 feet, and is covered with a luxuriant vegetation, 

 including lofty buttressed trees of colossal size. The total 

 number of species collected by Mr. Lister, and the officers 

 of H.M.S. Egeria, consisted of fifty-five phanerogams, 

 seventeen vascular, and eight cellular cryptogams ; but it 

 is probable that a thorough botanical exploration would 

 yield more than double the number of vascular plants, to 

 say nothing of cellular cryptogams. Several species are 

 described as new, but until the flora of Java and the 

 neighbouring; islands is better known, it would be hazardous 

 to assume that they are really endemic. The supposed 

 novelties include two ferns, two orchids, and a palm- 

 AreiiQ-a Lister i. 



Passing to the Keeling or Cocos Islands, some five 

 hundred miles westward in the open sea, we meet with a 

 very different Mora — the flora of low coral islands. This 

 is classic ground ; for it was here, in 1836, that Darwin 

 collected many facts afterwards utilised in his great 

 works. He was followed by H. O. Forbes in 1878, and 

 H. B. Guppy in 1888. 2 The latter gentleman spent ten 

 weeks in the islands, and succeeded in adding considerably 

 to what was previously known of that element of the vege- 

 tation which it is believed reached the islands without the 

 direct or indirect aid of man. Moreover, he critically ex- 

 amined the vegetable drift, which is often cast ashore on 

 these islands in great abundance, in relation to the germina- 

 tion of the seeds contained therein and the colonisation of 



1 " Report on the Botanical Collections from Christmas Island," 

 W. Botting Hemsley, in the Journal of the Linnean Society, xxv., 1890, 

 pp. 35i-3 62 - 



2 " The Dispersal of Plants, as Illustrated by the Flora of the Keeling 

 or Cocos Islands," a paper read at the Victoria Institute, H. B. Guppy, 

 Feb. 3, 1890. N.B. — This paper was not published, but the writer of the 

 present article was permitted to use it, and he gave the substance of it in 

 Nature, xli., pp. 491-492. 



