CHAPTER II 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



Anything approaching a complete revision of 

 the Geographical Distribution of the World's 

 Timber trees would fill a volume larger than the 

 present one. We can afford the space for but a 

 brief outline of the subject. Geographical Dis- 

 tribution, in the case of plants, confronts the 

 investigator with many perplexing problems. In 

 the first place man himself has done much to 

 complicate matters by introducing trees into 

 various parts of the world to which they are 

 not native ; the Mango, an Asiatic tree, is a 

 case in point, for it has been introduced into the 

 West Indies. Again, there are other trees which 

 are apparently native to widely separated coun- 

 tries, and how they have come to possess so 

 scattered a range has led to many theories, 

 some plausible, others by no means so. 



There are trees again, such as the Tamarind, 

 which occur practically everywhere throughout 

 the tropics, and this brings us face to face with 

 an important fact in connection with distribu- 



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