424 APPENDIX. No. V. 



years, that the relative numbers of the two primary divisions of phse- 

 nogaiiious plants arc inverted on the more northern parts of that coast ;* 

 dicotvledones 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 ACOTYLEDONOUS or cryptogamous plants of the herbarium from Congo, 

 ai'e to the phasnogamous as about 1 to 18. Some allowance is here to be 

 made for the season, peculiarly unfavoui'able, no doubt, for the investiga- 

 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 i-espect to some parts of the north coast of 

 New Holland.f 



I have in the same place considered the Acotyledones of equinoctial New 

 Holland, as probably forming but one-thirteenth of the whole nimiber 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 ph^nogamous plants, varies from that of 1:15 to 1:5 ; the 

 former being 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 Ihat coast might perhaps have been 

 conjectured from a passage ia Hans Egede's Description of Greenland, where it ic 

 stated, thai 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 warm, but are obliged to buy it fron* 

 " the southern parts." (English Translation, p. 44, and 47.) 



t Flinders' fot/age, 8. p. 539. 



