38 



Mueller, liobt. Brown, Dallachv, Beiithain, and others have 

 determined the predominence of species in Western Australia 

 and North-Eastern Australia.* Outside of Australian terri- 

 tory, the order would appear to have a wide geographic range, 

 through New Caledonia, Indian Archipelago, and Eastern 

 tropical Asia to Japan, and also in South Africa and vSouth 

 America. Of the relation of this order of plants to the pre- 

 existing flora of Australia, it seems probable that Proteaceous 

 genera were contemporaneous with the deposition of the Lower 

 Pliocene deposits, the fossil fruit Concliotheca rotunda bearing a 

 resemblance to several tropical representatives of the genus 

 Grevillea. 



As might be inferred from the altitudinal conditions, the 

 Australian Alps present hypsometric zones of vegetation, rising 

 from the gigantic Eucalypts of lower levels, through dense 

 masses of arboreous shrubs clothing the moist heads of gullies 

 at higher elevations, through zones of pasture lands and 

 dwarfed heath-like plants to the treeless region at 6,000 feet, 

 covered with alpine herbs, grasses, mosses, and lichens. Such 

 hypsometric zones, however, do not present us with any great 

 ordinal differences; on the contrary, the shrubs and plants 

 found growing at sub-alpine and alpine heights are, for the 

 most part, dwarfed representatives of lowland genera. There 

 are, of course, a few exceptions to the rule, such as the genus 

 Orites, which, as far as known, is limited to the mountainous 

 regions of New South "Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania. 



Persoonia confertiflora, Bentbam. 

 This interesting plant forms at elevations between 1,000 and 

 3,000 feet an erect shrub, but at higher elevations up to 4,500 

 feet it becomes dwarfed and divaricate. It is most abundant 



* From Baron Mueller's " Systematic Census " the following statistics 

 have been compiled : — Total Australian species, 587 ; number in West 

 Australia, 396 ; {South Australia, 33 ; Victoria, 51 ; Tasmania, 23 ; New 

 South Wales, 127 ; Queensland, 63 ; North Australia, 35.— i?. Tate. 



