FLORAS OF THE WORLD 11 



The greatest need in this field is a satisfactory flora of Madagascar. 

 Baron's Compendium dates from 1901 to 1906, Palacky's Catalogus 

 from 1905 to 1907, and both are merely lists, as is also the catalog 

 now being published in parts by the Academie Malgache. The excel- 

 lent descriptive Flore de Madagascar edited by Humbert has so far 

 covered only 6 of the 189 families represented in the flora, and the 

 prospects of its completion under present disturbed world conditions 

 are not favorable. The large proportion of endemics in this flora of 

 over 5,000 species and the extent to which the descriptions are scattered 

 in botanical literature make the publication of a descriptive flora of 

 the island one of the greatest desiderata in the botanical literature of 

 the world. 



The 23 islands or groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean are very 

 unequally covered. The chief ones of which knowledge of the flora, 

 however incomplete, is fairly well organized are the Australian Islands 

 (Antipodes, Auckland, Bounty, Campbell, Chatham, Kermadec, 

 Lord Howe, Macquarie, Norfolk, Snares), Borneo (Merrill's Biblio- 

 graphic Enumeration, 1921, with additions to 1926), Cocos Island, 

 Fiji Islands (Seemann, 1865-73, with extensive lists of additions by 

 several recent authors), Galapagos Islands, Java (Koorders' Exkur- 

 sionsflora, 1911-37) , Juan Fernandez Islands (Skottsberg, 1921), some 

 islands or groups in Melanesia (New Hebrides, Guillaumin, 1928 and 

 subsequently; New Caledonia, listed separately beyond; and, mostly 

 in less complete form, the flora of several smaller islands), Micro- 

 nesia (Kanehira's Enumeration, 1935; also Guam, Merrill, 1914, and 

 several of the smaller islands), New Caledonia (Guillaumin, 1911, 

 with a bewildering array of subsequent additions), Philippine Islands 

 (Merrill, 1923-26, with subsequent additions to 1930), parts of Poly- 

 nesia (Marquesas, Tuamotu, and Austral Islands, etc., Brown and 

 Brown, 1931-35; Samoan and Society Islands, listed separately be- 

 yond; and numerous single islands or small groups), Samoan Islands 

 (Reinecke, 1896-98, with additions; Christophersen, 1935-38), San 

 Ambrosio and San Felix (Skottsberg, 1937), and Society Islands 

 (Drake del Castillo, 1892, and Setchell's recent papers). 



Most of these islands, so far as modern floras go, are covered by 

 lists only, with the principal exception of Koorders' Exkursionsflora 

 von Java and Drake del Castillo's Flore de la Polynesie Franchise, 

 so that much research is necessary for the identification of specimens. 

 Sumatra and New Guinea are very inadequately provided with floras, 

 the former having Miquel's Prodromus of 1860 and various later lists 

 covering individual collections; the latter various lists of separate 

 collections, but no general flora since its treatment in Miquel's Flora 

 Indiae Batavae in 1855-59. The Hawaiian Islands have Hille- 

 brand's Flora of 1888, now far from satisfactory, and Degener's 

 Flora Hawaiiensis, a well-illustrated current work marred by its 

 piecemeal publication in loose-leaf form, a method of publication 

 which is unique among floras at present, and, it is to be hoped, forever. 

 Celebes has among modern floras only Koorders' Verslag of 1898. 

 covering the Minahasa Peninsula, with a set of supplements extend- 

 ing to 1922. Many of the smaller groups or single islands possess 

 fairly complete floras. The extent to which the known flora of the 

 smaller islands in Polynesia can be increased by careful collecting 



