June 6, 1872] 



NATURE 



113 



planation of tlie way in which ihe peculiar palms of New Guinea 

 could have arisen from allied Indian genera. With more plausi- 

 bility, although with little more foundation on ascertained facts, 

 may be put forward another cotijeclure derived from the respec- 

 tive relations of plants and animals to th'j outer worli. Froii 

 their organisation the former are much more dependent on 

 climate, the latter on the vegetati<m which serves them for food. 

 If an extent of sea is converted into Imd, its climate (inde- 

 pendently of its geographical position) will depend on the form 

 of its coasts and on the relief of its surface. If, now, creative 

 forces are pronounced, the forms of vegetation will be sui'ed to 

 the climate. These forms correspond to the climate of the 

 present day, as everywhere else, .=0 also from the Malayan con- 

 tinent to the .South-Sea Island;. If we assume that in an earlier 

 geological period the eastern portion of the Archipelago did not 

 yet possess its mountains, and was connected with Australia, m 

 might the .\ustralian climate have thea extended to the Archi- 

 pelago ; but with tl»e change in the climate the v gelation of the 

 time must have disappeared. A new flora aro?-e ; but in the 

 fauna, which was less dependent on climate, the earlier types 

 may have longer persisted. Perhaps the present period may be 

 regarded as one in which the Australian forms of animals are in 

 an expiring state, because the jungle forests do not sufficiently 

 correspond to their demands for food. It would appear as i'" 

 creative activity only wake; up at specific points of time on 

 specific points of the earth's surface, and that during the long 

 pauses Nature's struggles are directe 1 only to the retaining that 

 which exists. Vegetation, as well as the animals \\'hich it feeds, 

 must ever be considered in relation to the geological develop- 

 ments. During the time which has elapsed since the mountains 

 and the moist climate of New Guinea have been es'abl'shed no 

 new creation of Mammalia has taken place. Only very few 

 Marsupials, and scarcely any other Mammalia, have been found 

 on this great island. But in other classes of animals forms have 

 arisen corresponding to the present vegetation, such as the Birds 

 of Paradi-e, which are unknown in Australia, but which in New 

 Guinea hover over the forest tree-tojts, whilst they can take 

 shelter from the mid-day sun under the dense foliage. 

 The present type of organisation was already cast in New Hol- 

 land in the tertiary period, whilst the endemic plants and 

 animals of New Guinea appear to be of much later origin " (vol. 

 ii. pp. 69, 70). 



Without admitting to its fullest extent the main fact relied 

 upon, that there is no marked line separating the vegetation of 

 the western and the eastern portions of the Archipelago corre- 

 sponding to that laid down by Wallace for animals, a premature 

 conclusion in the present state of our knowledge,* and still less 

 entering into speculations as to the intermittent action of creative 

 forces which I do not quite comprehend, we must agree with 

 Grisebach that, so lar as shown by the scanty data at our 

 command, the uniformity is much greater in the botany 

 than in the zoology of the whole Archipelago. We may 

 also admit with him that this comp.arative uniformity may 

 be, in great measure, due to the uniformity of climate acting 

 more upon plants than upon animals. But there are other 

 circumstances which may probably have favoured the con- 

 tinued action of natural selection through countless ages in 

 procuring this result. Dr. Hooker has very plausibly suggested 

 a greater geological antiquity in the plant races than in those of 

 animals, especially the higher animals, under which the former, 

 or the ancestors from which they are descended, had become 

 established over a wide extent of continuous land before its suc- 

 cessive disruption, upheavals, and depressions producing the 

 present isulation. We must next take into account that this 

 continuity of land need not be so great in the case of plants as of 

 animals. The dispersion of the former is passive, and takes 

 place chiefly in a dormant state, in which minuteness and enor- 

 mous multiplication afford them opportunities for crossing seas 

 and other barriers denied to the higher animals. Plant races of 

 accommodating (aci:omotlationsfahi;^tr) constitutions, as they 

 successively arose and attained the full vigour of specific life, 

 will have early spread over any continuous or bat little broken 

 area, enjoying comparatively similar physical and climatological 

 conditions, the western and eastern forms intermingling, so as 

 that the one should only gradually be replaced by the other, thus 

 in early ages repeating under the tropics the phenomenon now 

 observed in the northern temperate Europeo-Asiatic region. 

 These vigorous or accommodating races, whether new differen- 



tiations or foreign invasions, will at the same lime have gradually 

 expelled and replaced races which in tertiary or other previous 

 periods had occupied the land under dilTerent conditions, and 

 which now could only maintain themselves in the struggle for 

 life in localities affording them, in their reduced or weakened 

 state, special protection against the effects of the altered climate 

 and the attacks of their vigorous competitors. Such localities, 

 suited to ancient or expiring races of few individuals, with varied 

 but always special requirements, and generally tlow of propaga- 

 tion, may be exemplified in the Mediterranean, the Japanese, 

 and other regions abounding, as Grisebach terms il, in centres 

 of vegetation ; they may be faintly traced in the N lyhtrries and 

 in Ceylon ; but are in general very few in Grisebach's Monsoon 

 region, and those few are as yet but little known or wholly un- 

 visited. Kini-Balu, in Borneo, has, however, as we learn from 

 Dr. Hooker, supplied a place of refuge for a certain number of 

 Australian types, and it may be conjectured thit many more 

 may have maintained themselves in those lofty mountains of 

 New Guinea which have as yet been only seen fiom a distance. 

 Continuity of vegetation probably existed in tertiary times be- 

 tween Australia and a vast extent of land including more or less 

 of both of Wallace's divisions of the Archipelago. How far 

 subsequent changes which have influenced the present distribu- 

 tion of animals may have affected that of the forest vegetation, 

 can only be judged of when the floras of Borneo, Celebes, and 

 New Guinea shall have been as well investig.ated and compared 

 as have been those of Sumatra and Java. 



( To be continued] 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



In the Journal of Botany for May the editor. Dr. H. Trimen, 

 describes a species of Lnznla new to the Flora of Europe, /. 

 purpurea Link, of which a drawing is given. — Mr. J. G. Baker 

 concludes his revi,ion of the Cape species of Antlicricnin. — Mr. 

 Archer Briggs notices some peculiarities of the botany of the 

 neighbourhood of Plymouth, principally with reference to species 

 common elsewhere which are absent from the south-western 

 extremity of our island. — Mr. O'Meara continues his researches 

 on Dia'o.-nacea'. 



The number for the present month opens with a note on 

 Dimorphism in Eranthcmum by Mr. John Scott.— The other 

 original articles are Notes on British Gentianace;T; by Mr. James 

 Britten, and Supplementary Notes on the E)ynph-A of the 

 United States by Messrs. Cooke and Peck. Several valuable 

 reprints, as well as many interes'ing short notes and queries, also 

 appear in both these numbers. 



The CaiiaJian Naturalist, vol. vi. No. 3, is almost wholly 

 devoted to Geology, commencing with a continuation of Prin- 

 cipal Dawson's series of papers on the Post-pliocene Geology of 

 Canada, the portion of the subject spe:ially treated of in this 

 number being the local details. — Prof. .Sterry Hunt's "History 

 of the names Cambrian and Silurian in Geology" has already 

 been reprinted m our columns. — Mr. E. Billings contributes some 

 "Remarks on the Taconic Controversy," in which he de'ends 

 the views of Dr. Emmons with regard to the position of these 

 rocks, and a no'e on the genus Oholellina. — The only new 

 geological article is Prof. Smallwooi's " Meteorological Results 

 for Montreal for the year 1S71. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



LONDO.V 



Royal Society, May 30.— "On the Structure and Function 

 of the Rods of the Cochlea in Mm and other Mammals." By 

 Urban Pritchard, M. D. 



The aim of this paper is to descr;be the true construction and 

 use of the cochlea, .so far as its task of distinguishing the various 

 sounds is concerned. This cochlea, it must be borne in mind, 

 consists of a spiral canal, in form and shape very similar to the 

 inside of a snail-sheU. From the axis of this spiral there pro- 

 ceeds horizontally a plate of bone, the lamina spiralis, almost 

 dividing this canal into two. From this plate again there extend 

 wo membranes, the membrane of Russner, and the Lamina 



