History of these, which I term the Indo-Malay islands, and to show how
far it supports this view, and how much information it is able to give
us of the antiquity and origin of the separate islands.
The flora of the Archipelago is at present so imperfectly known, and I
have myself paid so little attention to it, that I cannot draw from it
many facts of importance. The Malayan type of vegetation is however a
very important one; and Dr. Hooker informs us, in his "Flora Indica,"
that it spreads over all the moister and more equable parts of India,
and that many plants found in Ceylon, the Himalayas, the Nilghiri,
and Khasia mountains are identical with those of Java and the Malay
peninsula. Among the more characteristic forms of this flora are the
rattans--climbing palms of the genus Calamus, and a great variety of
tall, as well as stemless palms. Orchids, Araceae, Zingiberaceae
and ferns, are especially abundant, and the genus Grammatophyllum--a
gigantic epiphytal orchid, whose clusters of leaves and flower-stems are
ten or twelve feet long--is peculiar to it. Here, too, is the domain of
the wonderful pitcher plants (Nepenthaceae), which are only represented
elsewhere by solitary species in Ceylon, Madagascar, the Seychelles,
Celebes, and the Moluccas. Those celebrated fruits, the Mangosteen and
the Durian, are natives of this region, and will hardly grow out of the
Archipelago. The mountain plants of Java have already been alluded to as
showing a former connexion with the continent of Asia; and a still
more extraordinary and more ancient connection with Australia has been
indicated by Mr. Low's collections from the summit of Kini-balou, the
loftiest mountain in Borneo.
Plants have much greater facilities for passing across arms of the sea
than animals. The lighter seeds are easily carried by the winds, and
many of them are specially adapted to be so carried. Others can float a
long time unhurt in the water, and are drifted by winds and currents
to distant shores. Pigeons, and other fruit-eating birds, are also the
means of distributing plants, since the seeds readily germinate after
passing through their bodies. It thus happens that plants which grow
on shores and lowlands have a wide distribution, and it requires an
extensive knowledge of the species of each island to determine the
relations of their floras with any approach to accuracy. At present we
have no such complete knowledge of the botany of the several islands
of the Archipelago; and it is only by such striking phenomena as the
occurrence of northern and even European genera on the summits of the
118