304 NATURAL SCIENCE [November 
than fourteen species indicates that there is still much to be done 
before a satisfactory knowledge of the bryology of the islands is at- 
tained, and Mr Cardot believes that the number (eighty) could 
easily be doubled. The fungi are practically unstudied, and many 
species should be found in the moist wooded regions. The list of 
marine algae, “though unquestionably small, may doubtless be in- 
creased considerably by collections prosecuted through the entire 
year, while there is reason to expect a very large number of diatoms 
and desmids, as well as many representatives of other groups of 
fresh-water algae, whenever careful collections shall have been 
made.” As regards flowering plants and ferns, though the list 
is probably nearly complete, there is still scope for much interest- 
ing work, such as a detailed local flora for the islands, with an 
analysis of the influences which favour the extended distribution of 
one species while restricting another to a very limited area, For 
such an enterprise the catalogue which Prof. Trelease appends to 
his botanical observations would form a useful basis. Most of the 
species, it is suggested, “may have been introduced by ordinary 
means, largely through human agency, since the discovery of the 
islands, for they are so precisely comparable with similarly named 
species from other parts of the world as to suggest the lapse of a 
very short time since their separation from the parent stock.” Only 
a few are peculiar. Some of the latter are limited to one or other or 
several of the islands; but the native flora has clearly suffered so 
much through the inroads of man and domesticated animals, that it 
is impossible to say whether or not these local limitations have 
always existed. The greater number of the flowering plants are 
either wind-fertilised or adapted for pollination by but little- 
specialised insects, having as a rule open flowers, with readily 
accessible nectar or pollen, As regards relation between plants 
and animals, Prof. Trelease remarks that, as there are only seven 
species of wild mammals found in the islands, and nine endemic or 
commonly concerned with plant-dissemination elsewhere, and few 
birds capable of aiding in this work, except for aquatics or marsh 
plants, “it is scarcely to be expected that special dissemination 
adaptations would be found on the part of aboriginal plants, which 
presumably have been associated with these animals for a relatively 
short time, nor of recently introduced plants, unless the relations 
have been established and the modifications worked out before 
either plant or animal reached the Azores.” Well developed burrs, 
for instance, are found only on recent introductions, and the great 
majority of species “either have no special modification adapting 
them to certain dissemination, but depend upon gravitation, the 
wind, or hygroscopic movements of their seed vessels, or else their 
adaptations are out of harmony with their surroundings.” 
