On
the Organ Mountains of Brazil some few temperate European, some Antarctic
and some Andean genera were found by Gardner which do not exist in the low
intervening hot countries. On the Silla of Caraccas the illustrious
Humboldt long ago found species belonging to genera characteristic of the
Cordillera.
In Africa, several forms characteristic of Europe, and some few
representatives of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope, occur on the
mountains of Abyssinia. At the Cape of Good Hope a very few European
species, believed not to have been introduced by man, and on the mountains
several representative European forms are found which have not been
discovered in the intertropical parts of Africa. Dr. Hooker has also
lately shown that several of the plants living on the upper parts of the
lofty island of Fernando Po, and on the neighbouring Cameroon Mountains, in
the Gulf of Guinea, are closely related to those on the mountains of
Abyssinia, and likewise to those of temperate Europe. It now also appears,
as I hear from Dr. Hooker, that some of these same temperate plants have
been discovered by the Rev. R.T. Lowe on the mountains of the Cape Verde
Islands. This extension of the same temperate forms, almost under the
equator, across the whole continent of Africa and to the mountains of the
Cape Verde archipelago, is one of the most astonishing facts ever recorded
in the distribution of plants.
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