424 APPENDIX. No. V. 
years, that the relative numbers of the two primary divisions of phe- 
nogamous plants are inverted on the more northern parts of that coast ;* 
dicotyledones being to monocotyledones, in the list referred to, as about 
4 to 1, or nearly as on the shores of equinoctial countries. And analogous 
to this inversion it appears, that at corresponding Alpine heights, both in 
the temperate and frigid zones, the proportion of dicotyledones is still further 
increased, 
The acoryLEDoNoUs or cryptogamous plants of the herbarium from Congo, 
are to the phanogamous as about 1 to 18. Some allowance is here to be 
made for the season, peculiarly unfavourable, no doubt, for the mvestiga- 
tion of this class of plants. But it is not likely that Professor Smith, who had 
particularly studied most of the cryptogamous tribes, should have neglected 
them in this expedition; and the circumstance of the very few imperfect spe - 
cimens of Mosses in the collection being carefully preserved and separately 
enveloped in paper, seems to prove the attention paid to, and consequently the 
great rarity of, this order at least ; which, however, is not more striking than 
what I have formerly noticed with respect to some parts of the north coast of 
New Holland.+ 
I have in the same place considered the Acotyledones of equinoctial New 
Holland, as probably forming but one-thirteenth of the whole number of 
plants, while the general equinoctial proportion was conjectured to be one- 
sixth. This general ratio, however, is certainly over-rated, though it is pro- 
bably an approximation to that of countries containing a considerable portion 
of high land. Within the tropics therefore, it would seem that the ratio of 
acotyledonous to phenogamous plants, varies from that of 1:15 to 1:5; the 
former bemg considered as an approximation to the proportion of the 
shores, the latter to that of mountainous countries. 
* That some change of this kind takes place on that coast might perhaps have been 
conjectured from a passage in Hans Egede’s Description of Greenland, where it is 
stated, that although from lat. 60° to 65° there is a considerable proportion of good 
meadow land, yet in the more northern parts, “ the inhabitants cannot gather grass 
“ enough to put in their shoes, to keep their feet warn, but are obliged to buy it from 
“the southern parts.” (English Translation, p. 44, and 47.) 
+ Flinders’ Voyage, 2. p. 539, 
