Xl PBOCEEDINGS OF THE 



predominate in America, and run as mucli north and south as east 

 and west. Eriea, in the Old World, runs north and south, and is 

 specially numerous (400 species) in the limited Cape region; so 

 Acacia has nearly 300 of its species in the restricted Australian 

 region. The large number of genera which have from 100 to 400 

 species in the Cape flora or in Australia militate, indeed, very much 

 against the further proposition that genera have much fewer species 

 in regions physically and climatologically restricted than iu those of 

 extended areas under comparatively similar climates. 



Before quittingthe subject of the East- Asiatic biological regions and 

 their connexion with Am erica, I would notice a very interesting disser- 

 tation by our foreign Member J. F. Brandt on the Elk, included in the 

 ' Memoirs' of the Petersburg Academy, received last autumn. After 

 a careful review of a large mass of data, showing the identity of the 

 now living Europseo- Asiatic Elk with the liviugElk of North America, 

 with the comparatively recent fossil remains found in the temperate 

 regions of Europe, Asia, and North Am eric a, and with the miocene Elk 

 of the high north — after showing the wide area the animal occupied in 

 Europe and Asia in early (historic) times, and discussing the period 

 of its gradual disappearance from a great part of that area, he 

 proceeds, in an Appendix, to pass in rapid review the connexion 

 between the miocene Arctic flora and that of the present temperate 

 Europseo-Asiatic and North-American regions. In this, whilst duly 

 appreciating the labours of our distinguished foreign member Oswald 

 Heer, upon which the resume is chiefly founded, he vindicates for H. 

 R. Goppert, whom we are also proud to reckon amongst our foreign 

 members, now of many years' standing, the merit of having been the 

 first to point out (in 1853) the identity of several of these tertiary 

 remains (amongst others, of the Taxodium distichtcm) with actual 

 living species. A note by Maximowicz gives a summary of Asa 

 Gray's above-mentioned views as supported by E. Schmidt in his 

 * Flora of Sachalin,' although differed from by Regel (' Flora Ussuri- 

 ensis'), an advocate of the Atlantis theory. To this Maximowicz 

 adds that his own most recent researches have considerably increased 

 the number of species and genera common to Eastern Asia and 

 Eastern North America, and notably for this comparatively southern 

 Japanese region, observing, however, that the flora of the more 

 southern of the Kurile Islands, to the north of Japan, is as yet entirely 

 unknown. A second short Appendix of Brandt's gives the little 

 that is known of Arctic fossil insects, aU of which, he says in con- 

 clusion, agrees well with the view that the present North-Asiatic 

 and European as well as the North-American flora and fauna were 



