56 



THE WOELD OF LIFE 



\ 



1. Urticaeese 158 



2. Legviminosse 105 



3. Rubiacese 103 



4. Euphorbiaceae 100 



5. Orchideae 81 



6. Palmaeeae 78 



7. Gramineae 71 



8. Compositse 63 



9. :\Iyrtaeea». 58 



10. Meliaceae 58 



I will add a few words on a point of special interest to 

 myself. Having fonnd that tlie birds and mammals of the 

 eastern half of the Archipelago Avere almost wholly different 

 from those in the western half, and that the change occurred 

 abrnptly on passing from Bali to Lombok, and from Borneo 

 to Celebes (as explained in chapter xiv. of my Malay Archi- 

 pelago), the late Professor Huxley proposed that the straits 

 between them should be called '' Wallace's Line," as it forms 

 the boundary between the Oriental and Australian regions. 

 But later, as stated in my Island Life, I came to the conclu- 

 sion that Celebes was really an outlier of the Asiatic continent 

 but separated at a much earlier date, and that therefore Wal- 

 lace's Line must be dra^vn east of Celebes and the Philippines. 



The Flora of New Guinea 



Early botanical explorers in Kew Guinea were disappointed 

 by finding the flora to be rather poor and monotonous. This 

 was the case with Prof. O. Beccari, who collected on the north- 

 w^est coast; and Mr. H. O. Forbes, of the Liverpool Museum, 

 informs me that he formed the same opinion so long as he had 

 collected on the lowlands near the coast, but that on reaching 

 a height of near 1000 feet a much richer and quite novel flora 

 was found. Prof. Beccari, who is at this time studying the 

 palms from various recent Dutch, British, and German collec- 

 tions, now thinks that the number of species in Xew Guinea 

 is probably as gTeat, in equal areas, as in Borneo or the Malay 

 Peninsula, but that the species are not so distinctly marked 

 as in those countries. Thev are what he terms second-ffrade 

 species as compared with the first-grade species of the latter. 

 But he forms this opinion chiefly from the palms, of which 

 he makes a special study. 



