_Curious Relations of Mascarene Plants._--Among the curious affinities of Mascarene plants we have culled the following from Mr. Baker's volume. Trochetia, a genus of Sterculiaceae, has four species in Mauritius, one in Madagascar, and one in the remote island of St. Helena. Mathurina, a genus of Turneraceae, consisting of a single species peculiar to Rodriguez, has its nearest ally in another monotypic genus, Erblichia, confined to Central America. Siegesbeckia, one of the Compositae, consists of two species, one inhabiting the Mascarene islands, the other Peru. Labourdonasia, a genus of Sapotaceae, 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}