32 THE WORLD OF LIFE CHAP. 



he close of the enumeration, there can be little doubt that 

 the total will reach, before many years have elapsed, 10,000 

 or perhaps 12,000 species. It is, moreover, an area that 

 is especially rich in trees and shrubs, and as these are less 

 collected by the travelling botanist than the herbaceous 

 plants, it becomes still less easy to speculate on the actual 

 number of species this country really contains. Japan, 

 which is probably better known, has about 4000 species in 

 less than one-tenth the area, and is thus a little richer than 

 France. It agrees, however, very closely with the Western 

 Himalayas as estimated by Sir J. D. Hooker. 



Coming to the southern hemisphere, we find several 

 examples of exceedingly rich floras. The first to be noticed 

 is Chile, where, in an area of 250,000 square miles, 5200 

 species of flowering plants have been found. In Australia, 

 New South Wales, with an approximately equal area, has 

 3105 species, while West Australia has 3242 species in 

 what is probably not more than one-fourth the area, as so 

 much of that Colony is absolute desert. 



But richer than either of these is extra-tropical South 

 Africa, where, in about a million square miles, 13,000 species 

 are known, and there are still probably many to be added. 

 The richest portion of this area is the Cape Region, as de- 

 fined by Mr. H. Bolus, where, in 30,000 square miles, there 

 are about 4500 species of flowering plants. This area is the 

 same as that of southern Britain, and about one-third that of 

 West Australia excluding the tropical portions and the desert 

 All these rich areas in the southern hemisphere agree in 

 one respect, they are limited inland by mountains or deserts, 

 and their coast-line is bordered by a considerable extent of 

 sea less than 1000 fathoms deep, and another still larger 

 extent under 2000 fathoms. There is thus a high prob- 

 ability that in all these cases the flora was originally 

 developed in a much larger and more varied area, and that 

 it has been, in comparatively recent times, very greatly re- 

 duced in extent, thus crowding the various species together. 

 This has, no doubt, caused the extinction of some, while 

 others show that they are on the road to extinction by their 

 limitation to very narrow areas, as is especially the case with 

 many of the orchids, the heaths, and other characteristic 



