VOL. III. | Flora of the Cape Region. (229 
mus are found across the continent, while others may by future 
exploration have their now apparently widely separated habitats 
connected along a more southern route. 
The number of genera-in the ninety-nine orders found in the re- 
gion is three hundred and ninety, and two hundred and thirty of - 
them are represented by a single species, the flora being essentially 
insular the proportion of genera to species is large as in island 
floras. The largest genera are: Euphorbia with about twenty 
species, Cereus with nine, Acacia nine, Desmodium eleven, Cassia 
seven, Dalea seven, Ipomzea fourteen, etc. Leguminose, the largest 
order, has ninety-five species that are in most cases widely dis-. 
tributed throughout the region and abundant, so that this class of 
plants is the predominating one of the region. The second largest 
is Composite of eighty species; some of them ‘are very common 
and somesuch as Franseria, Eupatorium, Brickellia, become almost 
arborescent. Euphorbiacee has forty-eight, many of them small 
prostrate species of the genus Euphorbia, but one species of Phyl- 
lanthus is a small tree. Malvaceze has twenty-two, Graminz fifty- 
two, Filices twenty-two, Convolvulaceze twenty-five, Acanthacez 
seventeen. The relative positions of Leguminose and Composite 
in the flora of the world and that of Mexico are reversed and other 
large orders occupy different positions in the scale, but the region 
considered is so small that such comparisons have little value. 
By the term ‘‘ Mountain Flora’ is meant those plants growing 
only upon or very near to the top of the highest ridges and sum- 
mits of the mountains. Some plants of the lower elevations, such 
as Heterospermum, Behria, Centunculus, grow also up the mount- 
ains to their highest elevations, and others of the mountains are 
washed down the streams to the lower elevations, especially by the 
waters of the San José River; so that such strictly mountain plants 
as Clevelandia, Heterotoma and others can sometimes be found in 
damp stream beds, but the great mass of the mountain flora is 
peculiar to the high elevations. The hundred and forty-eight species 
belong to a hundred and seventeen genera; the orders containing 
the greatest number of species are: Filices with sixteen, Rosacesz 
six, Leguminosze fourteen, Composite twenty-one, Caryophyllacez 
six, Orchidacee nine. The largest genera are: Desmodium with 
three species, Notholzna of three; several others have two, but most 
of them are represented by buta single species. Forty-two of the 
hundred and forty-eight grow also in Alta California and ninety-five 
