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 Composite 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 Composite 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 Astereæ related to what occurs in New Zealand; others 
to such Labiatiflore as Juan Fernandez possesses; a third genus to the 
Melampodinous family of the Galapagos, and the fourth belongs to the same 
tribe of American Composite. 
This order here equals 4 of the whole Pheenogamic 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 35 
of Composite, 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 Composite 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 
colonised 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 
