CHAP. XIX 



THE MADAGASCAR GROUP 



441 



of Central Africa. A few Asiatic types are present which 

 do not occur in Africa ; and even the curious American 

 affinities of some of the animals are reproduced in the 

 vegetable kingdom. These last are so interesting that 

 they deserve to be enumerated. An American genus of 

 Euphorbiaceoe, Omphalea, has one species in Madagascar, 

 and Pedilanthus, another genus of the same natural order, 

 has a similar distribution. Myrosma, an American genus 

 of Scitaminese has one Madagascar species ; while the 

 celebrated " travellers' tree," Bavenala madagascariensis, 

 belonging to the order Musacese, has its nearest ally in a 

 plant inhabiting N. Brazil and Guiana. Echinolgena, a 

 genus of grasses, has the same distribution.^ 



Of the flora of the smaller Madagascarian islands we 

 possess a fuller account, owing to the recent publication 

 of Mr. Baker's Flora of the Mauritiits and the Seychelles, 

 including also Rodriguez. The total number of species 

 in this flora is 1,058, more than half of which (536) are 

 exclusively Mascarene — that is, found only in some of 

 the islands of the Madagascar group, while nearly a third 

 (304) are endemic or confined to single islands. Of the 

 widespread plants sixty-six are found in Africa but not 

 in Asia, and eighty-six in Asia but not in Africa, showing 

 a curious Asiatic preponderance. With the genera, how- 

 ever, the proportions are different, for out of the 440 

 genera of wild plants fifty are endemic, twenty-two are 

 Asiatic but not African, while twenty-eight are African 

 but not Asiatic. This implies that the more ancient 

 immigration has been from the side of Africa, while a 

 more recent influx, shown by identity of species, has come 

 from the side of Asia. This is no doubt due to those 

 facilities for immigration which have been already dis- 

 cussed in the early part of this chapter in reference to 

 the supposed continuous land connection between Mada- 

 gascar and southern India, and which would certainly be 

 much more effective in the case of plants. 



1 This brief account of the Madagascar flora has been taken from a very- 

 interesting paper by the Rev. Richard Baron, F.L.S., F.G.S., in the 

 Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol. XXV. (1889), p. 246 ; where much 

 information is given on the distribution of the flora within the island. 



