Coreopsis.
Argyroxiphium 2 With the Mexican Madieae.
Wilkesia 2 Same affinities.
Dubantia 6 With the Mexican Raillardella.
Raillardia 12 Same affinities.
Hesperomannia 2 Allied to Stifftia and Wunderlichia of Brazil.

Peculiar Species.

Lagenophora 1 Australia, New Zealand, Antarctic America,
Fiji Islands.
Senecio 2 Universally distributed.
Artemisia 2 North Temperate Regions.

The great preponderance of American relations in the Compositae, as above
indicated, is very interesting and suggestive, since the Compositae of
Tahiti and the other Pacific Islands are allied to Malaysian types. It is
here that we meet with some of the most isolated and remarkable forms,
implying great antiquity; and when we consider the enormous extent and
world-wide distribution of this order (comprising about ten thousand
species), its distinctness from all others, the great specialisation of its
flowers to attract insects, and of its seeds for dispersal by wind and
other means, we can hardly doubt that its origin dates back to a very
remote epoch. We may therefore look upon the Compositae as representing the
most ancient portion of the existing flora of the Sandwich Islands,
carrying us back to a very remote period when the facilities for
communication with America were greater than they are now. This may be
indicated by the two deep submarine banks in the North Pacific, between the
Sandwich Islands and San Francisco, which, from an ocean floor {326} nearly
3,000 fathoms deep, rise up to within a few hundred fathoms of the surface,
and seem to indicate the subsidence of two islands, each about as large as
Hawaii. The plants of North Temperate affinity may be nearly as old, but
these may have been derived from Northern Asia by way of Japan and the
extensive line of shoals which run north-westward from the Sandwich
Islands, as shown on our map. Those which exhibit Polynesian or Australian
affinities, consisting for the most part of less highly modified species,
usually of the same genera, may have had their origin at a later, though
still somewhat remote period, when large islands, indicated by the
extensive shoals to the south and south-west, offered facilities for the
transmission of plants from the tropical portions of the Pacific Ocean.

It is in the smal