DISTRIBUTION OF QUEENSLAND LICHENS. 411 



over 5,200 feet. The required conditions of shade and moisture 

 are best found on the Pacific slope ; and the scrubs of the lower 

 flanks and tableland buttresses of the Main Range, and those of 

 the rivers debouching from it, are the best collecting grounds for 

 the lichenologist. The mountain scrubs contain by far the larger 

 proportion of the frond ose Parmelias, Stictas, Physcias, and their 

 allies ; while the river scrubs are richest in Lecideas, Graphids, 

 Thelotremas, Pyrenulas, and others, in which the thallusis reduced 

 to a thin crust, or is hidden beneath the bark. 



Comparing the known lichens of Queensland with those of Great 

 Britain, it will found that one-thirteenth of those inhabiting the 

 British Islands have also been found in Queensland, but these belong 

 mainly to ( ladoniese and Parmeliea;, and of the Graphids and 

 Gymnocarpous species very few are common to the two countries. 

 Similar remarks follow from a comparison of Queensland and 

 Scandinavian lichens, but the plants common to both increase to 

 one-twelfth, which is also the fraction of the Swiss lichens known 

 to be inhabitants of our north-eastern colony. 



Leaving Europe for Asia the soecies represented in Queensland 

 becomes much more numerous ; in a list of the lichens of Palestine 

 and Egyjit, the kinds possessed in common by Queensland and 

 these Mediterranean countries form one fourth of the whole; from 

 Persia one-seventh; from the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of 

 Bengal, one-fifth ; and from Manipur, in India (a State lately 

 notorious for the murder of British oflficers), the common kinds 

 reached the high proportion of three-fifths. In the Rev. W. A. 

 Leighton's paper on the lichens of Ceylon one-third of those named 

 are also found in Queensland, nf Miiller Aargau's " Lichens of 

 Tonquin " one-half are plentifully distributed along our eastern 

 coast; and of his "Lichens (f Japan" we may also claim one- 

 half as natives of our colony. As the general flora of the so-called 

 Indian monsoon region and that peculiar to Australia overlap along 

 the northern and eastern coasts of Queensland to a very large 

 extent, and as many of the trees inhabiting the Queensland 

 scrubs are natives of the islands intermediate between the Malay 

 Peninsula and Australia, it is not remarkable that the lichens 

 which to so large au extent find a home on the bark of these 

 trees should agiee in character and even in species. In Forbes' 

 work, entitled " A Naturalist's Visit to the Malay Archipelago," of 

 8.56 plants reported, 241 are also to be found in the " Synopsis of 

 the Queensland Flora." 



Tasmania, New Caledonia, and New Zealand will naturally be 

 expected to show many points of resemblance to Queensland in 

 their respective lichen floras. Tasmania has Hunter Island and 

 King Island as stepping-stones between Cape Grim and Cape 

 Otway, and the Furneaux Islands as intermediate stages between 

 Cape Portland and Wilson's Promontory; and three-fifths of its 

 lichens are also found in Queensland. In New Zealand over one- 



