In their place California is filled with plants of other types--trees,
shrubs, and herbs, of which I will only remark that they are, with one or
two exceptions, as different from the plants of the Eastern Asiatic region
with which we are concerned (Japan, China, and Mantchooria), as they are
from those of Atlantic North America. Their near relatives, when they have
any in other lands, are mostly southward, on the Mexican plateau, or many
as far south as Chili. The same may be said of the plants of the
intervening great Plains, except that northward in the subsaline vegetation
there are some close alliances with the flora of the steppes of Siberia.
And
181
along the crests of high mountain-ranges the Arctic-Alpine . flora has sent
southward more or less numerous representatives through the whole length of
the country.
If we now compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic United States
with Japan, Mantchooria, and Northern China--i.e., Eastern North America
with Eastern North Asia, half the earth's circumference apart--we find an
astonishing similarity. The larger part of the genera of our own region,
which I have enumerated as wanting in California, are present in Japan or
Mantchooria, along with many other peculiar plants, divided between the
two. There are plants enough of the one region which have no representatives
in the other. There are types which appear to have reached the Atlantic
States from the south; and there is a larger infusion of subtropical
Asiatic types into temperate China and Japan; among these there is no
relationship between the two countries to speak of. There are also, as I
have already said, no small number of genera and some species which, being
common all round or partly round the northern temperate zone, have no
special significance because of their occurrence in these two antipodal
floras, although they have testimony to bear upon the general question of
geographical distribution. The point to be remarked is, that many, or even
most, of the genera and species which are peculiar to North America as
compared with Europe, and largely peculiar to Atlantic North America as
compared with the Californian region, are also represented in Japan and
Mantchooria, either by identical or by closely-similar forms! The same rule
holds on a more northward line, although not so strikingly. If we compare
the plants, say of New England and Pennsylvania (latitude 450_470), with
those of Oregon, and then with those of Northeastern Asia, we shall find
many of our own curiously repeated in the latter, while only a small number
of them can be traced along the route even so far as the western slope of
the Rocky Mountains. And these repetitions of East American types in Japan
182
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