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collections amount to no less a number than 550. The materials 

 that have served for the base of my investigations as illustrative 

 of and supplementary to the information derivable from botanical 

 books, were the herbaria of Kew and of the British Museum, the 

 collection of Afzelius, made at Sierra Leone and belonging to the 

 University of IJpsala, and the greater part of the Eubiace£e col- 

 lected by Dr. Peters in Mozambique, kindly lent from the Berlin 

 herbarium for the purpose of the 'Plora.' The specimens available 

 from these sources are the results of the labours of above a hundred 



collectors, and the sum of the number of species gathered by each 

 of the collectors amounts to above thirteen hundred. The largest 

 number of species collected by any one person is 175, that is, ^V 

 of the whole number of species hitherto known to occur in Tropical 

 Africa, all of these species having been obtained in Upper Gruinea 

 by G-ustav Maun. 



On comparing the number of species belonging to Eubiaceae 

 with the numbers already ascertained to belong to other large 

 natural Orders, it appears that in Tropical Africa Eubiaceae is the 

 Order of flowering plants second in size, it being rather more 

 numerous in species than Compositse and exceeded only by Le- 

 guminosse. It must, however, be borne in mind that when the 

 specimens of Composite gathered by Welwitsch in Angola have 

 been determined, they will perhaps augment the number of species 

 of the latter Order so as to outnumber Eubiaceae. At the same 

 tmie, from my acquaintance with these natural Orders in Tropical 

 Africa, I should expect that the results of future collections to be 

 made in this region will be likely to add more species to Eubiace» 

 than to Compositae ; indeed this expectation is confirmed by the 

 fact that three additional species of Eubiaceje require to be in- 

 cluded m these pages, whereas I should at this time have not even 

 one such species to add if I were writing similar notes on Com- 

 positae. The variations evidenced in the organs of our Eubiacete 

 are very numerous, and though often by no means conspicuous, 

 yet are dependent on such characters that it seems impossible to 

 disregard their specific importance; and in this manner the 

 number of species, many of them apparently quite local, is quickly 

 increased. Dr. Sehweinfurth, in his book of travels in the interior 

 of Africa, speaks of " the endless varieties of the Eubiace* " (vol. 

 1. p. 506, English edition), and there is no doubt but that many 

 more species remain to be discovered in that country. 



The number of Gramineae in Tropical Africa has not been as- 



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