LDTNEAN SOCIETY OF LOKDOK, xliii 



ship, of which the first part, just published in a more concise form, 

 gives a confident hope that it may be steadily and rapidly brought 

 to a conclusion. We shall then have ample means of instituting a 

 comparison of the Indian vegetation with that of Boissier's ' Flora 

 Orientalis ' to the north-west, of Ledebour's ' Flora Rossica ' to the 

 north, of Miquel's almost as complete though less methodical enume- 

 rations of Japanese plants to the north-east, of the ' Flora Austra- 

 liensis ' to the south, and of Oliver's ' Tropical African Flora ' to the 

 west. 



The ' Flora Indica ' does not, however, extend to the eastern portion 

 of Grisebach's Monsoon region, about which our information is so 

 deficient, but where, as he observes, " the distribution of organisms 

 involves one of the most remarkable problems in the darker regions 

 of vegetation-centres." He further remarks that the flora of this 

 eastern region, with the exception of the Timor group, is every- 

 where Indian, and regulated by climatological conditions, the 

 vegetation of New Guinea being, as he rather hastily supposes, 

 " thoroughly similar to that of Borneo " — a result quite at variance 

 with the distribution of animals as expounded by Wallace. As a 

 possible explanation of this discrepancy, he proposes a hypothesis 

 which, for fear of misrepresentation, I shall give at length: — " Thus 

 the limits of particular fonns of plants and of animals in the Indian 

 archipelago do not concur. Vegetation corresponds to climatological, 

 the fauna to local (raumliche) analogies. This opens a wide field for 

 speculations on the history of the globe. By a mere sinking of the 

 land to an unimportant extent, Darwinism readily explains the 

 origin of the fauna of these islands, but not the Indian character 

 of the flora of New Guinea, which presupposes much greater up- 

 heavals than the origin of the' fauna, calculated to give rise to 

 equatorial rainy seasons. This hypothesis would derive the endemic 

 marsupials of New Guinea from the Australian ones after the esta- 

 blishment of the Torres Straits ; but it gives no explanation of the 

 way in which the peculiar palms of New Guinea could have arisen 

 from allied Indian genera. With more plausibility, although with 

 little more foundation on ascertained facts, may be put forward 

 another conjecture derived from the respective relations of plants 

 and animals to the outer world. From their organization the 

 former are much more dependent on climate, the latter on the vege- 

 tation which serves them for food. If an extent of sea is converted 

 into land, its climate (independently of its geographical position) will 

 depend on the form of its coasts and on the relief of its surface. If, 

 now, creative forces are pronounced, the forms of vegetation will be 



