vi PREFACE. 
During the last twenty years the time of one member of the 
Kew staff has been almost exclusively occupied with the 
determination of South African plants. Upwards of 10,000 
specimens have been named and catalogued for South 
African botanists and colléctors, and a considerable number 
have been figured and described. These labours were a 
necessary preparation for the continuation of the Flora on its 
extended scale. 
This extension necessitated breaking up the whole area 
into smaller regions, the physical characters of which will 
probably be found tolerably well marked. They have been 
adopted in great part from the important paper, “ Sketch of 
the Flora of South Africa,” by Harry Bolus, F.L.8., pub- 
lished in the Cape of Good Hope ‘ Official Handbook’ for the 
Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886 (pp. 286-317), and also 
printed with a separate pagination. 
These regions may be briefly defined as follows :— 
i. Coast Region.—Includes the narrow belt lying between 
the South-western and Southern coasts and the Zwarte Bergen 
range, from the Oliphants to the Kei rivers. 
ii. Central Region.—Can only be roughly defined as lying 
between the Coast and the Kalahari regions. 
iii. Western Region.—Extends from the Tropic to the 
Oliphants river, and includes Great and Little Namaqualand. 
iv. Kalahari Region.—Includes the Kalahari, Bechuana- 
land, Griqualand West, Transvaal, Orange Free State, and 
Basutoland. 
v. Eastern Region.—lIncludes the belt lying between 
the Eastern coast and the Drakens Berg range, from the Kei 
river to the Tropic. It therefore comprises Natal, Zululand, 
Griqualand East, &c. 
The plants of the older collectors, which are often destitute 
of precise localities, have been simply referred to under the 
general head of South Africa. 
For reasons of convenience it has been ‘sca advisable to 
publish the present volume in anticipation of the fourth and 
fifth, which are also in preparation, and to which it is hoped 
