blance to the living flora of the mountains of western China, and to its more or less 

 allied geographical provinces — Japan, the Himalaya, Eastern Tibet, and the Malay 

 Peninsula. A less close relationship exists with the flora of Europe, the Caucasus, and 

 the Mediterranean ; a still remoter with the flora of North America. 



This close relationship with the mountain flora of western China is marked by 

 the presence in Limburg of various species which, though now extinct in Europe, cannot 

 be separated from living Chinese plants. The most noticeable of these are Gnetum scan* 

 dens, Stewartia Pseudo=camellia, Magnolia Kobus, Zelcowa Keaki, Pyrularia edulis, Prunus 

 Maximoviczii. Besides these, others occur which, belonging to genera now extinct in 

 Europe, are still represented in China by species closely allied to our fossils. Of these 

 perhaps the most interesting is Meliosma europaea, which we at first thought might be 

 referred to the living Meliosma Veitchiotum of the mountains bordering China and 

 Tibet. Actinidia faveolata is another conspicuous example. 



Not only is the alliance marked by the number of species belonging to Chinese 

 and Japanese genera which are not represented in Europe, but by the curious fact, that 

 when the genus lives in both Europe and China, it is often the Chinese or Japanese 

 species that most resembles the Reuverian plant. Thus in the genus Pterocarya, P. lim= 

 burgensis is more closely allied to P. hupehensis than to P. caucasica. In Styrax the alliance 

 is with S.japonica and S. Obassia. In the genus Betula we have B. digitata, an ally of the 

 Chinese B. ulmifolia and belonging to a section of the genus no longer found in Europe. 

 In Cornus we have either C. controversa or a closely allied species. The only Clematis is 

 the Chinese C. grata, not the nearly related European C. Vitalba. But perhaps the most 

 remarkable of these cases is in the genus Eupatorium; for not only is the alliance of the 

 Reuverian plant closer to E. japonicum, but it is closest to an unnamed variety of 

 E. japonicum, collected by Pere Faurie from a single mountain in Japan. 



It is necessary to bear in mind that not only is the Chinese alliance strongly 

 marked, but it is actually more strongly marked than that with the existing flora of the 

 Mediterranean basin. And this is so even though the Reuverian flora suggests a mean 

 temperature not greatly differing from that found in southern France at the present day. 



The Chinese alliance is a very peculiar one. It is not a resemblance, such as we 

 should expect, between the Reuverian flora and the existing lowland flora of certain 

 latitudes of China, which now have a mean temperature similar to that which held in 

 Limburg in Pliocene times. The alliance is shown almost entirely by species whose 

 northernmost geographical range now lies much further south than Limburg; but they 

 are mountain plants in China, and are not now found anywhere on the plains. In other 

 words, though living in southern latitudes they are temperate forms, and belong to the 

 moist and temperate forestubelt found only on the Chinese mountains *, and in the 



* An excellent description of this mountain region of Western China and its flora will be found 

 in Mr. E. H. Wilson's recently published book "A Naturalist in Western China" 2 vols. 1913. Mr. Wilson 

 spent several years collecting in this region, and the discovery of a great part of the species is due to him, 

 following after Dr. Augustine Henry. 



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