Review

This book reports on one of the symposia of the Third ICSEB Congress at Brighton, 1985. It is published only six years after the first volume in the same series (“Wallace’s Line and plate tectonics” also edited by Whitmore) treated the same problems for the same region. This is explained by the “important geological discoveries and new paleobotanical evidence” that have come available in the mean time. These discoveries are discussed in Audley-Charles’s contribution where it is stated that present-day Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Sumatra contain fragments rifted northwards from the N. Australian-New Guinea content in the Mesozoic. Being above sea-level in late Mesozoic and later they may have transported early Angiosperms. Although it may be said that the very complex geological history of the region between Asia and Australia gradually becomes clearer, this does not mean that biogeographical problems are now solved. It is still a matter of controversy where the ‘cradle’ of the Angiosperms is situated. Takhtajan in his paper considers the possibility that one of the above-mentioned rafts could be the early centre of diversification of the Angiosperms