DISTRIBUTION OF SPHAGNUM AND CAREX 349 



from Asia and North America, the postulate of a traverse of the 

 Southern Ocean being quite unnecessary. It has also been before 

 pointed out that of the six species of Carex, which Australia and 

 New Zealand possess in common with the southern part of South 

 America, four could have been derived from Central and South- 

 eastern Asia, and that the question of a South American origin 

 could only be raised concerning two species, C. darwinii and C. trifida. 

 Whilst it is highly probable, as previously shown, that the Chatham 

 Islands, its only locality in that region, received the first species from 

 Fuegia, the evidence respecting the second is indeterminate. 



The connection between the Australian and New Zealand region 

 and South Africa is not illustrated by Sphagnum, and it affects only 

 two species of Carex (C. cernua and C. cederi); but it has already 

 been indicated that the evidence, though not decisive, tells more 

 against than in favour of a trans-oceanic connection, since the 

 original forms of both species could have reached the Australian and 

 New Zealand region from Asia. 



The Asiatic Connections of the Australian and New Zealand 

 Region. — By far the most important are the Asiatic connections 

 of this region. As before remarked, all the species of Sphagnum 

 and nearly all the Carices that occur outside its limits are found in 

 Asia. There is no special connection with either Europe or North 

 America which is not also Asiatic, all the species so concerned being 

 widely distributed in the northern hemisphere. Asia, therefore, 

 represents the immediate source of the Australian and New Zealand 

 species of Sphagnum and Carex, since derivation from southern 

 South America and from South Africa is altogether excluded for the 

 Peat-mosses and for all but 3 or 4 per cent, (two or three out of 

 sixty- one) of the Carices. 



When we examine the matter more closely, we find that all of the 

 outside species of Sphagnum and that fifteen of the twenty-one out- 

 side species of Carex occur in Japan, a fact that merely indicates a 

 common centre of dispersion in Central Asia for the representatives 

 of the genera reaching Japan and the Australian and New Zealand 

 region. Of the Himalayan region as the centre of departure from 

 which the same species has often travelled north-east to Japan and 

 south-east to Malaya and Australia, more will be said. The route 

 is determined in each case from the distribution of the species of 

 Sphagnum and Carex that are concerned. In the case of Sphagnum 

 there are four species — S. fimbriatum, papillosum, cymbifolium, 

 medium — that have found their way to either Australia or New 

 Zealand from South-eastern and Central Asia. All of them are 

 spread far and wide over the northern hemisphere in North America 

 and in Eurasia, and all have spread from the same Asiatic centre to 

 Japan as well as to the Australian and New Zealand region. The 

 two first named, however, present great gaps between their occur- 

 rence in the Himalayas and Burma and in New Zealand. The third 

 shows a similar hiatus between Southern China and New South 

 Wales, and the fourth between the Bhutan Himalayas and the Blue 

 Mountains in South-east Australia. But these gaps can be filled 

 up by other species that reach Japan and Malaya from the Himalayan 



