246 The Philippine Journal of Science m6 
and on the Rubiace ae are not available for publication at the 
present time. All the material of the Orchidaceae is in the hands 
of Doctor J. J. Smith, and of the Rubiaceae is in the hands of 
Dr. Th. Valeton for study. 
In the present enumeration the vast majority of the species 
included are those already described by the other authors. The 
percentage of novelties in the collection is small, as was to be 
expected from a small island that has been visited by so many 
botanists as Amboina, for Amboina is classical ground in Ma- 
layan botany. The work of most botanists and collectors in 
Amboina, however, has been confined for the most part to 
visits of from a few days to a few weeks, and it is apparent 
that a considerable amount of Amboinan botanical material still 
remains in various herbaria unidentified. A few new species 
have been proposed; namely, about twenty-three by myself in 
various groups, two species of Piper by M. C. de Candolle, and 
three species of lichens by Mr. G. K. Merrill. The collection 
has supplied material by which the status of several of Rox- 
burgh’s species, based on material originating in Amboina or in 
the Moluccas, and which were very imperfectly described, can 
definitely be determined, quite apart from the value of the 
specimens placed in the other series, Plantae Rumphianae Am- 
boinenses, in determining the status of the very numerous spe- 
cies based on Rumphius’s descriptions and figures. 
Like many other parts of the Malay Archipelago, the vegeta- 
tion of Amboina has been much changed since the time that 
Rumphius wrote his Herbarium Amboinense. It is evident that 
the forests were then much more extensive than they are to-day. 
As the population has increased, the virgin forest has been de- 
stroyed to make way for cultivated lands, and it is very probable 
that in Amboina, as certainly in the more densely populated 
Island of Java, species more or less common in Rumphius’s time, 
have since been exterminated or at least have become very rare 
and local. The virgin forest supports a type of vegetation en- 
tirely different from that of the settled areas and the second- 
growth forests, and as a rule, this type of forest, when once 
destroyed in the Malayan region, is never replaced by the same 
type of vegetation, or if replaced, the original species grow again 
only after the lapse of many years. 
As the present contribution is by no means a study of the 
flora of Amboina as a whole, it is hardly the place to discuss the 
characteristics or the relationships of the flora. It is very prob- 
able that eventually the island will present a very small endemic 
