"Such
plants on oceanic islands are, like the savages which in some islands
have been so long the sole witnesses of their existence, the last
representatives of their several races.") had generally viewed the
endemic plants of the Atlantic islands. Now, as you well know, the
Canaries alone of all the archipelagoes were inhabited. In the third
column have you really materials to speak of confirming the proportion
of winged and wingless insects on islands?

Your comparison of plants of Madeira with islets of Great Britain is
admirable. (376/4. "What should we say, for instance, if a plant so
totally unlike anything British as the Monizia edulis...were found
on one rocky islet of the Scillies, or another umbelliferous plant,
Melanoselinum...on one mountain in Wales; or if the Isle of Wight and
Scilly Islands had varieties, species, and genera too, differing from
anything in Britain, and found nowhere else in the world!")

I must allude to one of your last notes with very curious case of
proportion of annuals in New Zealand. (376/5. On this subject see
Hildebrand's interesting paper "Die Lebensdauer der Pflanzen" (Engler's
"Botanische Jahrbucher," Volume II., 1882, page 51). He shows that
annuals are rare in very dry desert-lands, in northern and alpine
regions. The following table gives the percentages of annuals, etc., in
various situations in Freiburg (Baden):--

Annuals. Biennials. Perennials. Trees and
Shrubs.
Sandy, dry, and
stony places: 21 11 65 3

Dry fields: 6 4 90

Damp fields: 12 2 77 9

Woods and copses: 3 2 65 31

Water: 3 97

Cultivated land: 89 11

Are annuals adapted for short seasons, as in arctic regions, or tropical
countries with dry season, or for periodically disturbed and cultivated
ground? You speak of evergreen vegetation as leading to few or confined
conditions; but is not evergreen vegetation connected with humid and
equable climate? Does not a very humid climate almost imply (Tyndall) an
equable one?

I have never printed a word that I can remember about orchids and
papilionaceous plants being few in islands on account of rarity of
insects;