VI.—A Contribution to the Bibliography of 
the Botany of Borneo. By B. D. Merrill, 
Bureau of Science, Manila, Philippine Islands. 
In August, 1910, Mr. J. G. Moulton, Director of the 
Sarawak Museum, kindly undertook to secure for the 
Bureau of Science a native botanical collector, and to super- 
vise his work. The arrangement was perfected with the 
object of securing for the Herbarium of the Bureau of 
Science some botanical material representing the Bornean 
flora for purposes of comparison with the Philippine flora, 
to determine more definitely the geographic distribution 
of certain species, and especially to determine the phyto¬ 
geographic connections between the floras of Borneo and 
the Philippines. Borneo being only slightly explored 
botanically, it was thought that the paucity of species 
known to be common and confined to the Philippines 
and Borneo might be explained on this score ; that is, our 
imperfect knowledge of the Bornean flora as compared 
with our much more extensive knowledge of that of the 
Philippines. The proximity of Borneo to the Philippines 
and the two manifest lines of connecting islands, "to the 
south the Sulu Archipelago, and to the north Mindoro, 
the Calamianes group, Palawan, and Balabac, naturally 
leads one to expect that the Philippines and Borneo would 
present close botanical connections, yet this seems not to 
be the case. While the Bornean collections have not been 
studied in detail, yet a cursory examination of the collec¬ 
tions so far received, comprising somewhat over 8000 
numbers, shows that the floras of Borneo and the Philip¬ 
pines have comparatively little in common. It is true that 
most of the species found along the seashore in Borneo are 
also found in the Philippines ; and this is also true of those 
species that are found in the cleared and more or less 
settled areas at low and medium altitudes. In general, 
however, most of those species found near the seashore 
and in the settled areas are of very wide Indo-Malayan 
i 
Sar. Mus, Journ., No. 6,1915. 
