268 MR. D'URBAN ON THE NATURALIZED WEEDS 
able until very recently to spare the time necessary to look up 
my notes on Kaffrarian botany dispersed through my journals. 
I hope the following notes will not be too late to be of some slight 
service to you. You must remember, in extenuation of the scan- 
tiness of my list of weeds and the small amount of information I 
have to supply you with, that I was resident only twelve months 
in the colony of British Kaffraria, and my time was mainly occu- 
pied with the Filices amongst plants and the Rhopalocera amongst 
insects, and their pursuit necessarily took me away a good deal 
from the neighbourhood of European cultivation, where alone, 
in a new colony, intrusive weeds are likely to be met with, 
though in the case of some few remarkably prolifie and Maay 
species the whole country may be overrun by them. 
I also suffered from the want of botanical works, Harvey’s ‘ Ge- 
nera of South African Plants,’ Asa Gray’s ‘ Manual of the Botany 
of the Northern and Midland States of America,’ and Lindley’s 
‘School Botany ’ being the only ones to which I had access. 
British Kaffraria is still but an infant colony. King William’s 
Town, the capital, was founded only about twenty-eight years 
since, and it was abandoned for some years, or until the Kaffir 
war of 1848, when it was again taken possession of by the British 
Government. The Rev. J. Brownlee, the first Missionary to the 
Kaffirs who succeeded in establishing himself amongst them, 
being an enthusiastic botanist and gardener, introduced most of 
the more valuable cultivated plants now growing at King Wil- 
liam’s Town, long before the province had been taken possession 
of by our troops. British Kaffraria is situated on the south- 
eastern coast of Africa, between the Keiskamma and Great Kei 
Rivers. King William’s Town is 25 or 30 miles in a straight line 
from the sea-coast, and is in lat. 32° 52' S., long. 27? 29' E. The 
winter, from April to September, is the oes season, when rain 
rarely falls, and frosty nights occur occasionally. The summer is 
generally very wet, with frequent violent thunder-storms and 
sudden changes of temperature. I should not have made the few 
notes subjoined, had not the subject of the intrusion of weeds 
occupied my attention when exploring with Sir William Logan in 
the backwoods of Canada, where I was greatly interested by the 
gradual advance of the weeds accompanying European immigra- 
tion into the very heart of the forests. They already form at 
least one-tenth of the somewhat scanty flora of the Laurentian 
rocks north of the Ottawa wherever a settlement has been formed, 
and all along the banks of rivers which lumber-men have ascended, 
