[BOOK][B] Observations of a naturalist in the Pacific between 1896 and 1899: plant-dispersal

HB Guppy - 1906 - books.google.com
HB Guppy
1906books.google.com
ALTHOUGH this volume contains a great amount of original material, I am largely indebted
to the labours of my predecessors for its present form; and a scheme that at first was limited
only to my own observations in the Pacific has gradually extended itself to the general
subject of plant-dispersal. The farther I proceeded in my work the more I realised that the
floras of the Pacific islands are of most interest in their connections, and that the problems
affecting them are problems concerning the whole plant-world. Deprived of the writings of …
ALTHOUGH this volume contains a great amount of original material, I am largely indebted to the labours of my predecessors for its present form; and a scheme that at first was limited only to my own observations in the Pacific has gradually extended itself to the general subject of plant-dispersal. The farther I proceeded in my work the more I realised that the floras of the Pacific islands are of most interest in their connections, and that the problems affecting them are problems concerning the whole plant-world. Deprived of the writings of Seemann, Hillebrand, Drake del Castillo, and other botanists, several of whom have lived and died in the midst of their studies of these floras, and without the aid of the works of Hemsley and Schimper, generalisers who have mainly cleared the way for the systematic study of plant-distribution and plant-dispersal, it would not have been possible for me to accomplish such an undertaking. My interest in plant-dispersal dates back to 1884, when, whilst surgeon of HMS Lark, in the Solomon Islands, I made some observations on the stocking of a coral island with its plants, which were published in the Report on the Botany of the" Challenger" Expedition. In 1888 I followed up the same line of investigation during a sojourn of three months on Keeling Atoll, and during a journey along the coasts of West Java. But realising that as yet I had barely touched the fringe of a great subject, and that several years of study would be required before one could venture even to appreciate the nature of the problems involved and much less to weigh results,
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