432 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



it takes a great deal of trouble to distinguish and characterize 

 them by sharp diagnoses. 1 have called these mosses " malaria 

 mosses," and know at once the kind of climate of their home, 

 wherever they may have come from. What is the significance 

 of this ? Nothing else but that the same climatic regions have 

 produced the same types — either the same or, at any rate, 

 very similar species. There can be no question of migration, 

 because the malaria mosses occur far in the interior of a con- 

 tinent as well as on its coasts, provided the low-lying land is 

 tropical. This was strikingly shown by the mosses collected 

 by Dr. George Schweinfurth in the lowlands of central 

 Africa, especially in the districts of Niam-Niain, Monbuttu, 

 &c, and which were intrusted to me for determination. 



I come now to a still more remarkable circumstance — viz., 

 that the floras of certain districts are not homogeneous, but 

 exhibit amongst their warp a woof which has nothing in com- 

 mon with it, but exhibits the stamp of a totally different flora. 

 I have already mentioned it in the Australian type, which 

 beyond a doubt belongs to the oldest forms of plant-organiza- 

 tion on our globe. It is well known to phyto-geographers 

 that this Australian type extends in Chili down to Tierra del 

 Fuego and its islands, and eastwards as far as Brazil. In 

 this large territory, including the Island of Chiloe, mosses are 

 met with which resemble with wonderful closeness species 

 from New Zealand. But the same thing is seen in Africa 

 also, especially south Africa, which in its Proteacecs really 

 repeats Australia. West Australia, which has in every re- 

 spect a totally different flora from eastern Australia and its 

 islands, shows forms which are peculiar to Africa, and which 

 must be very surprising to West Australian phyto-geographers 

 — viz., the monkey bread-fruit tree, or baobab. Over the 

 whole enormous extent of Africa there is only one species 

 {Adansonia digitata) ; Australia has furnished a second in 

 A. gregorii, but this is found in such an isolated region of the 

 interior that the question, From which of these points did the 

 type originate ? has lost its sense. Australia did not receive 

 it from Africa, nor did Africa receive it from Australia — it is 

 autochthonous in both places ; and one sees here once again 

 that the same conditions of creation produced in different 

 places the same type, only in different species. If this be not 

 the case, the enigma cannot be explained by migration, for 

 that necessarily includes the idea that the reproduction of the 

 type was successful in one place only. This always makes 

 on me the same impression as the idea of explaining the origin 

 of organisms by deriving them from some other globe. What 

 is gained by it ? Nothing else but that the cause of origin is 

 put further back ; for, after all, one is obliged to ask, Where 

 did the organisms of that strange globe come from ? — they 



