350 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



region, but fall just short of Australia. Thus Sphagnum junghuh- 

 nianum is a Himalayan species that has arrived at Japan to the 

 north-east and at New Guinea to the south-east after halting in the 

 last case on the mountains of Java and Celebes. (On account of 

 its convenience the term " Malaya " is applied in this chapter to all 

 the region between South-eastern Asia and Australia.) 



Bridging over the Gap in Malaya by the Carices. — The more 

 numerous data supplied by Carex enable us to bridge over the gap 

 usually presented by Sphagnum in the Malayan region, since one- 

 third of the eighteen Asiatic species found in the Australian and 

 New Zealand region are there represented. If we look at the twelve 

 Carices that jump over the Malayan Archipelago, we find that eight 

 are wide-ranging North American and Eurasian species; and, as 

 indicative of their capacity to reach as far as they can get, we notice 

 that all but one have traversed Eastern Asia and reached Japan, 

 four or five of these being recorded from the Himalayas. 



The six Australian and New Zealand Carices that fill up the gap 

 in Malaya (C. rara, indica, rafflesiana, maculata, breviculmis, brunnea) 

 are purely Asiatic, none being recorded from either Europe or North 

 America. They are most at home as denizens of warm latitudes in 

 southern and south-eastern Asia ; but they also illustrate in the case of 

 three of them (C. rara, breviculmis, brunnea) how the same species of 

 Carex from a centre in the Himalayan region can reach Japan in the 

 north-east and Australia in the south-east. The distribution of C.indica 

 is illustrative of the track pursued by one of these Himalayan species 

 in reaching Australia. We can connect its habitat in Sikkim and 

 in Northern Australia with records from Assam, the Malay Peninsula, 

 Borneo, Java, and New Guinea. The case of C. breviculmis is also 

 interesting and suggestive. From an altitude of 10,000 feet in the 

 North-west Himalayas it passes across Assam to Tonkin and appears 

 on Mount Scratchley in New Guinea at an elevation of 12,200 feet 

 before making its way south to South-eastern Australia and New 

 Zealand. 



These half a dozen Carices that halt in the Malayan region on their 

 way to Australia from South-eastern Asia include, as has been said, 

 three Himalayan species ; and in this connection it should be noted 

 that several other Himalayan Carices accompany them as far as the 

 highlands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, but no farther. I have 

 made from KiikenthaFs monograph a list of fourteen purely Asiatic 

 species (ten Himalayan and four from Southern India and Assam) 

 that have had their passage to the south-east arrested in Malaya. 

 They were, however, more successful in their passage to the north- 

 east, since half of them have reached Japan. But the point to be 

 specially noted here is that the Carices from the Himalayan heights 

 select similar great altitudes in Malaya. Thus C. filicina and C. 

 fusiformis, which have been recorded from elevations of 8000 to 

 12,000 feet in the Himalayas, have been collected on Mount Kinabalu 

 in Borneo at altitudes of from 9500 to 11,500 feet. So again, 

 C. teres, which occurs on the Sikkim Himalayas at an elevation of 

 8000 to 9000 feet, has been gathered on the slopes of the volcanic 

 mountain of Papandayan in Java. 



