Origin of Species Variorum

Caraccas, the illustrious Humboldt long ago found species belonging to genera characteristic of the Cordillera. In Africa, several forms characteristic of Europe and some few representatives of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope occur on the mountains of Abyssinia. ↑ At the Cape of Good Hope a very few European species, believed not to have been introduced by man, and on the mountains several representative European forms are found, which have not been discovered in the intertropical parts of Africa. Dr. Hooker has also lately shown that several of the plants living on the upper parts of the lofty island of Fernando Po and on the neighbouring Cameroon mountains, in the Gulf of Guinea, are closely related to those on the mountains of Abyssinia, and likewise to those of temperate Europe. It now also appears, as I hear from Dr. Hooker, that some of these same temperate plants have been discovered by the Rev. R. T. Lowe on the mountains of the Cape de Verde islands. This extension of the same temperate forms, almost under the equator, across the whole continent of Africa and to the mountains of the Cape de Verde archipelago, is one of the most astonishing facts ever recorded in the distribution of plants. On the Himalaya, and on the isolated mountain-ranges of the peninsula of India, on the heights of Ceylon, and on the volcanic cones of Java, many plants occur, either identically the same or representing each other, and at the same time representing plants of Europe, not found in the intervening hot lowlands. A list of the genera of plants collected on the loftier peaks of Java, raises a picture of a collection made on a hillock in Europe! Still more striking is the fact that peculiar Australian forms are .. represented by certain plants growing on the summits of the mountains of Borneo. Some of these Australian forms, as I hear from Dr. Hooker, extend along the heights of the peninsula of Malacca, and are thinly scattered on the one hand over India, and on the other hand as far north as Japan.

On the southern mountains of Australia, Dr. F. Müller has discovered several European species; other species, not introduced by man, occur on the lowlands; and a long list can be given, as I am informed by Dr. Hooker, of European genera, found in Australia, but not in the intermediate torrid regions. In the admirable 'Introduction to the Flora of New Zealand,' by Dr. Hooker, analogous and striking facts are given in regard to the plants of that large island. Hence we see that certain plants growing on the more lofty mountains ... of the tropics in all parts of the world, and on the temperate plains of the north and south, are either the same species or varieties of the same species. It should, however, be observed