38 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



hundred and sixty-eight genera and ninety-five natural 

 orders. Thirty-two species are only known in the Anda- 

 mans elsewhere, and thirteen are apparently confined to 

 the Coco group, but some of these may yet be found to 

 have a wider range. In any case the endemic element is 

 small and exhibits no special features. Cocos nucifera is 

 abundant in all the islands, yet the author of the paper 

 from which we are citing is of the opinion that it is not 

 indigenous, and he is inclined to believe that its presence 

 is due to the wreck of some coco-nut-laden craft on their 

 coasts. 



Among the smaller islands of the Indian Ocean 

 botanically investigated within the last decade we may 

 name Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago, Krakatoa 

 in the Sunda Straits, and Christmas and Keeling Islands 

 off the western coast of Java. 1 In the early accounts of 

 Diego Garcia, mention is made of gigantic trees ; and if 

 such ever existed, which is not improbable, they were 

 probably Afzelia bijuga and Cordia sitbcordata. When 

 the island was botanised in 1885, however, only a few small 

 straggling trees were left. Forty-three probably indigenous 

 species of vascular plants are recorded from the islands, and 

 nearly all of them are common in Malaya and Polynesia. 

 Not one of these is endemic ; but two or three cellular 

 cryptogams are described as new. 



The new flora of Krakatoa 2 is one of the most instructive 

 lessons in the distribution of plants that actual observation 

 has ever furnished ; and Dr. Treub understood how to 

 describe it in a highly attractive form. It is to be hoped 

 that he has been able, or will be able, to follow up his 

 investigations begun in 1886, three years after the great 

 catastrophe, which so utterly destroyed the previously 

 existing vegetation, as Dr. Treub assures us, that no living 

 vegetable was left on the ground or in the ground, for so 



1 " Report on the Botany of Diego Garcia," W. Botting Hemsley, 

 in the Journal of the Linnean Society, xxii., 1886, pp. 332-340. 



2 "'Notice sur la Nouvelle Flore de Krakatau," Treub, in Annates 

 du Jardin Botanique de Biutenzorg, vii., 1888, pp. 213-223. 



