of Australia: INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. nil 
light as the European, and as a mere fragment of* a much more extensive one. whose other members 
perished in the battle tor plaee w aired with the Huropean and Australian during those changes of 
climate and level that succeeded their first introduction. The ultimate numerical ascendency of tin- 
Australian botanical element may have been pained durinir the subsequent partition of the continent 
into archipelagos of islands, which became so many colonies of Australian types of vegetation, pre- 
pared on the final rise of the land to descend and occupy the intermediate -round. Tlie paucity 
of alpine plants of Australian genera is a fact which lends itself well to this idea; it implies that. 
during either the rise of land or increase of temperature, the tendency of the species of Australian 
type was to seek warmer regions, and that the boreal and antarctic types being better suited to 
a colder climate prevented to a great extent the establishment of such varieties of Australian type 
as might otherwise have been adapted to inhabit the same climate as themselves. 
When I take a comprehensive view of the vegetation of the Old World, 1 am struck with the ap- 
pearance it presents of there being a continuous current of vegci;. ,< -dully express 
myself) from Scandinavia to Tasmania; along, in short, the whole 
sphere which presents the greatest continuity of land. In the first place. Scaudina\ia 
even species, reappear everywhere from Lapl a n d and Iceland to the tops of the Tasmanian alps, in 
rapidly diminishing numbers it is true, hut in vigorous development throughout. They abound on 
the Alps and Pyrenees, p«88 on to the Caucasus and Himalaya, thence they exfa nd along the K hasia 
mountains, and those of the peninsulas of India to those of Ceylon and the Malayan archipelago 
(Java and Borneo), and after a hiatus of &f, they appear on the alps of New South Wale*, 
Victoria, and Tasmania, and beyond these again on those of New Zealand and the Antarctic Mauds, 
many of the species remaining unchanged throughout ! It matters not what the vegetation of the 
bases and flanks of these mountains maybe; the northern species maybe associated with alpine 
forms of Germanic, Siberian, Oriental, Chinese, American, Malayan, and finally Australian and 
Antarctic types; but whereas these arc all, more or less, local assemblages, the Scandinavian asserts 
his prerogative of ubiquity from Britain to beyond its antipodes. 
Next in importance and appearance along the arc indicated is that Flora which may be called 
Himalayan,* and which consists of the endemic plants of that range, with a mixture of Siberian, 
Caucasian, and Chinese genera; this, gathering strength in its progress south-eastward along the 
ranges of northern and eastern India, occupies the flanks of all the mountain-chains I have enume- 
rated between the Caucasus and Malay Islands; but there the Himalayan Flora disappears, and does 
The Malayan Floraf is in many respects closely allied to the Himalayan, but is wholly tropical 
in character. This also very gradually app. ars in the valleys of the western and central Himalaya. 
and multiplying in gen rweepa dowr. 
the Malayan peninsula, occupies all the Malavan Mauds, and then it too stops short without entering 
* Characterized "■ Tknuhremi > m,La rime*, I 
f Vaccine*, I ■ Dipterocarpea, Mgru- 
p, Anonacea, Menispcnnea. 
i It consists of Acanthacea, Stercmtiacem, and other Orders, enumerated at p. xlii. ei seq. 
