244 Dr. J. D. Hooker on the Vegetation 



alone, internal evidence of a strong botanical relation between that Archipe- 

 lago and Mexico, which a further examination of other orders confirms. 

 Juan Fernandez in like manner abounds in a tribe peculiarly copious in 

 Chili, and the New Zealand arborescent Composites are allied to, though 

 generically and specifically very different from, those of New Holland : but 

 on the other hand, the peculiar genera of the Sandwich group are scattered 

 through many tribes, belonging some to the old world and others to the new ; 

 whilst in St. Helena (the whole of whose Compositce are shrubby or arborescent, 

 and all belonging to peculiar genera), the order seems made up of the frag- 

 ments of groups characteristic of very remote parts of the world : the majority 

 belong to a genus of Asterece related to what occurs in New Zealand ; others 

 to such Labiatifloroe as Juan Fernandez possesses ; a third genus to the 

 Melampodinous family of the Galapagos, and the fourth belongs to the same 

 tribe of American Compositce. 



This order here equals \ of the whole Phsenogamic plants, or is nearly the 

 same as its proportion is for the flora of the whole world, and the same as 

 that of the Sandwich group, but smaller than that of Juan Fernandez, and 

 especially of St. Helena, where it equals one-third of the flowering plants 

 remaining there. On the other hand, the Society group, in possessing only -^ 

 of Compositce, the smallest number relatively to the whole flora of any tropical 

 country, betray their relationship to the flora of the torrid zone in the old 

 world, which in this respect is strikingly contrasted with that of the new ; 

 for it is not improbable that there are more species of this order contained 

 in the comparatively narrow belt of land comprised between the tropics of 

 America, than the same latitudes produce from the west coast of Africa east- 

 wards to the remotest of the Pacific islands. 



Except St. Helena, there is no part of the globe whose Compositce are so 

 nearly unexceptionably different from those of any other country as the Gala- 

 pagos. Of the 17 genera in which they are included, 5 are widely different 

 from any previously known ; and of the species, 28 in number, 23 are pecu- 

 liar and 5 are tropical weeds, readily introduced by man, and found in the 

 colonized islets alone ; whence their origin is suspicious. Of the 12 re- 

 maining genera, 9 are almost exclusively American, and the remainder of 

 more general distribution. The last circumstance connected with this order 



