i867— 1882] INSULAR FLORAS 9 



I suppose, admit that every yard of land has been Leu** 

 successively covered with a beech forest between the 

 Caucasus and Japan ! 



I have not yet seen (for I have not sent to the station) 

 Falconer's works. When you say that you sigh to think 

 how poor your reprinted memoirs would appear, on my 

 soul I should like to shake you till your bones rattled for 

 talking such nonsense. Do you sigh over the Insular 

 Floras, the Introduction to New Zealand Flora, to Australia, 

 your Arctic Flora, and dear Galapagos, etc., etc., etc. ? In 

 imagination I am grinding my teeth and choking you till 

 I put sense into you. Farewell. I have amused myself by 

 writing an audaciously long letter. By the way, we heard 

 yesterday that George has won the second Smith's Prize, 

 which I am excessively glad of, as the Second Wrangler 

 by no means always succeeds. The examination consists 

 exclusively of [the] most difficult subjects, which such men 

 as Stokes, Cayley, and Adams can set. 



A. R. Wallace to C Darwin. Letter 385 



March 8th, 1S68. 



. . . While writing a few pages on the northern alpine 

 forms of plants on the Java mountains I wanted a few cases 

 to refer to like Teneriffe, where there are no northern forms 

 and scarcely any alpine. I expected the volcanoes of 

 Hawaii would be a good case, and asked Dr. Seemann about 

 them. It seems a man has lately published a list of 

 Hawaiian plants, and the mountains swarm with European 

 alpine genera and some species ! ' Is not this most 

 extraordinary, and a puzzler? They are, I believe, truly 

 oceanic islands, in the absence of mammals and the extreme 

 poverty of birds and insects, and they are within the 

 Tropics. 



Will not that be a hard nut for you when you come 

 to treat in detail on geographical distribution ? I enclose 

 Seemann's note, which please return when you have copied 

 the list, if of any use to you. 



1 "This turns out to be inaccurate, or greatly exaggerated. There are 

 no true alpines, and the European genera are comparatively few. See 

 my Island Life, p. 323."— A. R. W. 



