1895. RESULTS OF ''CHALLENGER'' EXPEDITION. 27 



these fruits and seeds may be carried considerable distances by sea 

 without any immersion in salt water ; in this he advanced a step 

 on Darwin. 



The " Challenger " returned home in INIay, 1876; the zoologic 

 collections were handed to specialists for study and description. 

 Moseley's collections were sent to Kew and simply placed in the 

 herbarium. Most of the islands at which he had collected had been 

 previously visited by^professed botanists : as St. Helena by Roxburgh 

 and Burchell, the Falkand, Kerguelen, and many other islands in the 

 Southern Ocean by Sir J. D. Hooker ; and of these more complete 

 floras already existed than the collections and notes of Moseley could 

 furnish. The publication of Phanerogamic Botany in the Report of the 

 voyage could hardly have been contemplated in the original official 

 instructions ; and it was only seven years after the collections had 

 been stored at Kew that, on the recommendation of Sir J. D. Hooker, 

 himself the leading authority on Insular floras, the task of preparing a 

 report on the botany of the " Challenger" Expedition, to he restricted to 

 Insular Floras, was entrusted to W. B. Hemsley. The reports on 

 Algge, Diatoms, etc., being largely on marine species, were made by 

 specialists ; Mr. Hemsley's work, with its inferences, is on the 

 Phanerogams and Vascular Cryptogams of the islands visited ; he 

 drew up lists of these plants for Bermuda, Fernando-Noronha, 

 Ascension, St. Helena, Trinidad, Tristan da Cunha, the Prince 

 Edward group, Amsterdam and St. Paul, Juan Fernandez, Aru and 

 Ke Isles, and Admiralty Isles ; he tabulated these, shov/ing their distri- 

 bution in the nearest islands or continents, and discussed with numeric 

 percentages and detail their affinities, indigenous character, or manner 

 of introduction. In doing this work, Hemsley availed himself of all 

 the previous collections and preceding writings, so that, in several 

 cases, the collections and notes of Moseley supply but a fraction of the 

 material worked up and discussed by Hemsley in the Botany of the 

 " Challenger." 



In restricting this report to insular floras, due regard was 

 paid to the opinion which Moseley had himself expressed on the 

 important deductions to be derived from them concerning the distri- 

 bution of plants. This is especially true as regards the remoter 

 islands little visited by man. In many islands, the indigenous 

 vegetation has been almost wholly destroyed by him, and by the 

 animals he has brought, while weeds have been plentifully introduced ; 

 where he has deserted his wasteful plantations, the weedy scrub, 

 which has sprung up, in no wise resembhng the primaeval forest, is 

 of no botanic interest. At the same time, it is highly instructive to 

 discover exactly the route by which the new weeds arrived ; there 

 will too often remain a doubt as to many plants — whether they are 

 indigenous or not. Islands lend themselves very kindly to Hemsley's 

 tabulation in that they provide definite areas ; if we begin to tabu- 

 late the " Cape Flora," our option where we choose to draw the 



