Vol. 7 No. I 



TORREYA 



January, 1907 



SOME AFFINITIES OF THE PHILIPPINE FLORA LIBRARY 



NEW YORK 



By C. B. Robinson BOTANICAL 



While all of the botanical papers which have been issued from ^ 

 time to time by the Philippine Bureau of Science and its prede- 

 cessors have contributed greatly to our knowledge of the flora 

 of the islands, one of the most recent * contains an introduction of 

 such exceptional interest as to call for special notice. 



It is hardly too much to say, that at the beginning of the 

 American occupation information on this subject was drawn 

 almost entirely from two sources, the great collection made by 

 Hugh Cuming in the years 1835-40, and the work of the resident 

 Spanish botanists. Cuming is said f to have taken back with him 

 to England about 130,000 sheets of dried plants, and he also in- 

 troduced into cultivation a number of the more striking orchids. 

 His collection numbers exceeded 2,400, but they were not exclu- 

 sively Philippine, some coming from Singapore and the Malay 

 peninsula, and a very few from Sumatra. So far as their distri- 

 bution between these larger geographical areas is concerned, the 

 facts have long been definitely known ; and although many 

 species from this source have been wrongly credited to the Phil- 

 ippines in the past, and occasionally still are, this part of the 

 problem has no longer any difficulties for a careful student. A 

 list further exists purporting to give the locality for each plant, 

 but these data have been shown X to be incorrect in so large a 

 proportion of the few cases where other evidence was available 

 that the list must be held unreliable as a basis for dividing the 



* Elmer D. Merrill, New or noteworthy Philippine plants, V. Philipp. Jour. 

 fsv Sci. I : Suppl. (3) 169-246. 15 Au 1906. 

 g tJour. Bot. 3: 325. 1865. 

 "' tJour. Bot. 24: 59, 60. 1886. 



• [No. 12, Vol. 6, of ToRREYA, Comprising pages 241-272, was issued December 



^ IS, 1906.] 



:o 1 



