NO. 61. — 1908.] LESSER KNOWN HILLS. 



169 



letters cut on any part of the rock, nor did I find any images 

 of any sort. 



With regard to the flora of this exceedingly interesting 

 mountain, one is met with a complex problem to account 

 for many of the species, but I venture, with the utmost re- 

 spect to those scientific botanists who hold that many plants 

 are introduced by birds, either carrying seed in their digestive 

 organs or even in mad attached to their feet, that such expla- 

 nation is not fully supported, and that a more natural process 

 of introduction is possibly admissible. 



It is not denied that birds do carry seed in their intestines, 

 and so do certain mammalia, but I do not think sufficient 

 importance is attached to the natural spread of plants by the 

 ordinary process of growing, fruiting, and seeding. Time is 

 no factor in the issue, except in so far as it affords opportu- 

 nity for environmental variation to develop into an ultimately 

 widely divergent form from primary forms, sufficient, 

 after a lapse of ages, to render these surviving forms to be 

 even specifically different. This difference, in the case of 

 species, spreading under conditions of great climatic variation, 

 can readily lead to wide deviation from the aboriginal parent, 

 and hence, I submit, that by an accumulation of adaptations 

 to surroundings, they do, by the laws of natural selection, 

 establish an ultimately modified form, strictly in equilibrium 

 with ultimate surroundings. The process is possibly exceed- 

 ingly slow, but is in no way bound by the factor of time. 

 Moreover, I venture to believe that sufficient importance 

 is not attached to the effects of human agency in the 

 introduction of plants of utilitarian or aesthetic value. 



Thus, on the summit of " Westminster Abbey," one finds 

 the ordinary pineapple in a most degenerated form, close to 

 that rare composite the Notonia. The presence of a begonia 

 in close proximity to Mimusops elengai , amid an abundance 

 of Melastomaceous plants, can readily be explained, as a 

 combination of artificial introductions intermixed with those 

 naturally introduced. 



The presence of a large kina (Calophyllum tomentosum), 

 so out of place in the dry zone, is striking, but I found that 

 in each instance that I encountered it, it was in the immediate 



N 20-08 



