Origin of the Angiosperiiioics Flora of South Africa. 357 



and I must unfortunately pass his views over as they are not 

 intelligible to me. I hope he will soon publish a much more detailed 

 account, since Madagascar is supposed not only to have been a 

 portion of the hypothetical Indo-oceanic continent, but also of the 

 " Archhellenis " of von Ihering. It should therefore form, as it 

 were, a centre in which all Southern (including Indian) types should 

 be met with as far as they could adapt themselves to such conditions 

 as we may expect to have existed in Madagascar since Cretaceous 

 times, and as, further, the age at which Madagascar was separated 

 from the various countries with which it has been connected, can be 

 determined with approximate certainty, it will be seen how important 

 it will be to analyse the Flora of Madagascar most minutely at 

 some future date. In the meantime I must content myself with a 

 few quotations from Wallace (1892, p. 440) dealing with the Flora of 

 Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands, though I cannot agree with 

 the conclusions which he draws from the facts. 



"The affinities of the Madagascar Flora are to a great extent in 

 accordance with those of the Fauna. The tropical portion of the 

 Flora agrees closely with that of Tropical Africa, while the plants of 

 the highlands are equally allied to those of the Cape and of the 

 mountains of Central Africa. Some Asiatic forms are present which 

 do not occur in Africa ; and even the curious American affinities of 

 some of the animals are reproduced in the vegetable kingdom. 

 These last are so interesting that they deserve to be enumerated. 

 An American genus of Euphorbiacese, Omphalea, has 1 species in 

 Madagascar, and Pedilanthus, another genus of the same natural 

 order, has a similar distribution. Myrosma, an American genus 

 of Scitamineae has 1 Madagascar species ; while the celebrated 

 ' travellers' tree,' Bavenalia madagascariensis, belonging to the 

 order MtisacecB, has its nearest ally in a plant inhabiting North 

 Brazil and Guiana. Echinolcena, a genus of grasses, has the same 

 distribution. 



" Of the Flora of the smaller Madagassian islands we possess a 

 fuller account, owing to the recent publication of Mr. Baker's Flora 

 of the Mauritius and the Seychelles, including also Eodriguez. The 

 total number of species in this Flora is 1,058, more than half of 

 which (536) are exclusively Mascarene — that is, found only in some 

 of the islands of the Madagascar group, while nearly a third (304) 

 are endemic or confined to single islands. Of the widespread 

 plants 66 are found in Africa and not in Asia, and 86 in Asia but not 

 in Africa, showing a similar x\siatic preponderance to what is said to 

 occur in Madagascar. With the genera, however, the proportions 

 are different, for I find by going through the whole of the generic 



