PREFACE, 
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IN undertaking the FLorA CapeEnsis, the authors propose to 
furnish to the colonists in the British South African provinces a 
clear and concise descriptive catalogue of the vegetable produc- 
tions of their adopted country. As the colonies have no very 
definite limits to the northward, neither have the authors been 
anxious to fix a boundary line to this Flora. Generally speak- 
ing, the Cape Flora is limited on the North by the Gariep or 
Orange River, and on the Kast by the Tugela—boundaries more 
convenient than natural, for the Orange River at its western 
extremity rather flows through, than bounds the peculiar Desert 
Flora of Namaqualand ; and the Tugela merely limits the Brit- 
ish Colony of Natal, while the characteristic vegetation of Kaffer- 
land, of which Natal is a section, extends northward at least to 
Delagoa Bay, gradually assuming the features of Tropical African 
vegetation. Whilst therefore our FLORA will be found tolerably 
complete for the old-established colonial districts, both of the 
Western and Eastern provinces, it presents little more than an 
outline sketch of the Northern and North Eastern Regions, and 
of the Natal Colony ; and still more imperfectly pourtrays the 
vegetation of Great Namaqualand, Betchuana-land, the Orange 
River Free State, and the Transvaal Republic, all lying beyond 
the Gariep. 
The authors have diligently availed themselves of every accessi- 
ble collection of plants from the last named regions ; but so few 
botanical travellers have yet explored them, save in some scatter- 
ed spots, that their vegetation is as yet all but unknown. From 
what we know of the plants of Transvaal, especially of its moun- 
tains and high plateaus, that country promises to the botanist 
the richest harvest yet ungathered in South Africa; and the long 
mountain range that divides Kaffraria from the Western regions, — 
