THE AZORES 



413 



many parts of Europe " (Hooker's Lecture, p. 26). Let me give 

 an example, which is typical of much. If there is one tree that is 

 characteristic of these Laurel woods of the Macaronesian islands, 

 it is Laurus canariensis. Although it is now confined to these islands, 

 it grew in South Europe in Upper Tertiary times. It was to this 

 and its associated plants that Hooker was alluding when he wrote 

 that the vegetation of Europe has undergone a complete revolution 

 within the lifetime of species that now so forcibly arrest our attention 

 in the forests of the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores. These 

 species, he continues, are living witnesses of that period, when trees, 

 now characteristic of Asia and America, formed the forests of the 

 European continents. 



The last stage in the history of the indigenous flora of the Macaro- 

 nesian islands is that represented by species that still exist in Europe 

 and North Africa. It may be said to be still in progress and includes 

 the minority of the trees and shrubs of the Laurel woods, and in 

 the Azores, in particular, the plants of the upland moors. 



Presumably, therefore, the Canary Islands and Madeira, especially 

 the former, hold the wrecks of many floras. To the exclusion of 

 the Azores, they possess a number of strange genera and peculiar 

 species, that tells us of the ages which preceded the period indicated 

 by the non-European trees and shrubs that are common to the 

 Laurel woods of all three groups. The waves of African, Asiatic, 

 and American plants that have in successive ages passed over this 

 portion of the globe, left their wash on the Canarian and Madeiran 

 groups before the Azorean islands became available for plant- stocking. 

 Whilst the Azores possess no genus of their own, and relatively 

 few peculiar species that are beyond suspicion, the Canaries hold 

 some ten or twelve genera that are all their own, besides a number 

 of genera, of which they share exclusive possession with Madeira. 

 It is difficult to separate Madeira from the Canaries in the sense 

 that we can detach the Azores ; but the contrasts in the floral history 

 of this region may be sufficiently illustrated by the circumstance, 

 that, whilst quite one-third of the Canarian species are peculiar, 

 the proportion amongst the Azorean plants would not exceed a 

 tenth. 



To the student of distribution the Azorean flora offers but few 

 "problem" plants; whilst the other two groups, particularly the 

 Canarian, present a host of difficulties of this kind. It is possible 

 that important episodes in the history of the Azorean flora may have 

 their only witnesses in Campanula vidalii and Myrsine africana, of 

 which the first is peculiar to the group, while the second is an Asiatic 

 and African plant that has been found neither in the Canaries nor 

 in Madeira. But it would be idle to speculate on their stories now. 

 I would rather close this chapter with the reflection that whilst in 

 the Canaries and Madeira quite other questions are often raised 

 than those concerned with existing means of dispersal, questions 

 that might carry us far back in geological time, with the Azores 

 questions dealing with existing modes of dispersal are imminent. 

 When Wallace expressed the opinion in his Island Life and in his 

 Darwinism that the plant- stocking of the Azores could be attributed 



