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A STUDY OF SOME FACTS AND THBOEIES BEARING 

 UPON THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF THE 

 ANGIOSPERMOUS FLORA OF SOUTH AFRICA. 



By S. Schonland, Hon. M.A. Oxon., Ph.D. 



(Read August 28, 1907). 



The affinities of the Flora of South Africa with other Floras were 

 recognised as soon as floristic studies had been sufficiently advanced 

 to warrant a comparison, but speculations as to its origin were 

 naturally barren, as long as the former distribution of land and 

 water in the Southern Hemisphere could not be surmised. Un- 

 fortunately Palaeo-botany, which might have given us the clue, has 

 to a large extent failed to render any assistance. The supposed 

 identification of Southern types of plants in the Tertiary deposits of 

 the Northern Hemisphere are considered by most eminent botanists, 

 such as Sir Jos. Hooker, the late Mr. G. Bentham, A. Schenk, &c., 

 as worthless. Laurent has recently (1899, p. 69) ''' tried again to 

 prove that the ProteacecR originated in the North, but the evidence 

 on which he relies seems to be altogether untrustworthy, and he 

 knocks his whole argument to pieces by stating (p. 77) with reference 

 to the forms he describes ''nous ne disons pas que ce sont des 

 Proteacees mais que ce sont des plantes a aspect proteiforme de 

 nature coriace et seche." Why, then, does he refer them even to 

 definite genera of Proteacecd ? 



The question of the origin of our Flora having been approached 

 almost entirely by European botanists, who were naturally influenced 

 by the leading features of the development of the Floras of the 

 Northern Hemisphere, it has sometimes greatly suffered through 

 forced interpretations of facts and supposed facts (compare, e.g., 

 Thiselton-Dyer, 1878). The data for an adequate treatment of the 

 subject are absent even to this day ; still it may be advisable to focus, 

 as it were, the facts which recent researches have brought to light 



* The numbers in brackets refer to the Bibliography appended to this essay, the 

 titles being arranged in chronological order. 



