ae, has two species in Mauritius, one in Natal, and one in Cuba.
Nesogenes, belonging to the verbena family, has one species in Rodriguez
and one in Polynesia. Mespilodaphne, an extensive genus of Lauraceae, has
six species in the Mascarene islands, and all the rest (about fifty
species) in South America. Nepenthes, the well-known pitcher plants, are
found chiefly in the Malay Islands, South China, and Ceylon, with species
in the Seychelles Islands, {443} and in Madagascar. Milla, a large genus of
Liliaceae, is exclusively American, except one species found in Mauritius
and Bourbon. Agauria, a genus of Ericaceae, is found in Madagascar, the
Mascarene islands, the plateau of Central Africa, and the Camaroon
Mountains in West Africa. An acacia, found in Mauritius and Bourbon (_A.
heterophylla_), can hardly be separated specifically from _Acacia koa_ of
the Sandwich Islands. The genus Pandanus, or screw-pine, has sixteen
species in the three islands--Mauritius, Rodriguez, and the Seychelles--all
being peculiar, and none ranging beyond a single island. Of palms there are
fifteen species belonging to ten genera, and all these genera are peculiar
to the islands. We have here ample evidence that plants exhibit the same
anomalies of distribution in these islands as do the animals, though in a
smaller proportion; while they also exhibit some of the transitional stages
by which these anomalies have, in all probability, been brought about,
rendering quite unnecessary any other changes in the distribution of sea
and land than physical and geological evidence warrants.[114]

{444}

_Fragmentary Character of the Mascarene Flora._--Although the peculiar
character and affinities of the vegetation of these islands is sufficiently
apparent, there can be little doubt that we only possess a fragment of the
rich flora which once adorned them. The cultivation of sugar, and other
tropical products, has led to the clearing away of the virgin forests from
all the lowlands, plateaus, and accessible slopes of the mountains, so that
remains of the aboriginal woodlands only linger in the recesses of the
hills, and numbers of forest-haunting plants must inevitably have been
exterminated. The result is, that nearly three hundred species of foreign
plants have run wild in Mauritius, and have in their turn helped to
extinguish the native {445} species. In the Seychelles, too, the indigenous
flora has been almost entirely destroyed in most of the islands