BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 377 
lay before the public some ‘Notes and Observations on the Botany, 
Weather, &c., of the United States of America, made during a tour in 
that country in 1846 and 1847. “An indifferent state of health,” 
he tells us, “rendering a change of scene, climate, and occupation 
absolutely necessary, I determined, towards the middle of 1846, on 
visiting the United States of America; a country I had long wished to 
see, as well on account of the great moral and political experiments of 
which it is the theatre, as of the analogy its vegetation bears to that of 
Europe, our own island of Great Britain included.” This interesting 
journey extended from Canada north, to New Orleans south, and west- 
ward to St. Louis on the Missouri. 
Happy would it have been for his friends if this had been the last 
of his wanderings. He had returned in greatly improved health, and 
somewhat more than half a Yankee, for a time, in appearance and 
dress ; but his energetic mind longed to occupy itself with oriental 
scenery and productions, and his carefully-kept Journal, now before us, 
written in the form of letters to his beloved sister, shows how deeply 
he was interested in the wonders of Egypt and Nubia. He accord- 
ingly embarked from Alexandria in the Sultan steamer, in September 
1850. He climbed the Pyramids and penetrated their interior recesses. 
He ascended the Nile, to visit Thebes, in company with two other 
English gentlemen, Lieut. Pengilly and Mr. Lakes, a young naval 
officer. Above Ekhmeon in Upper Egypt, they came at one and the 
same time on crocodiles and on the curious and famous Doum Palm, 
the latter remarkable especially for the forking (so unusual in the 
Palms) of its repeatedly dichotomous stem ; each branch terminating. 
in a tuft of fan-shaped leaves, and bearing a noble cluster of fruits, 
of which our valued friend did not fail to secure a fine specimen for the —— 
Museum of the Royal Gardens of Kew, where it is already deposited. 
Each fruit is, when fresh, the size of a large apple, and the outer eat- : 
able coat has a flavour always (and not inaptly) compared to ginger- 
bread. “Yesterday (Dec. 14), whilst taking an evening ramble, we - 
noticed the Doum Palms, growing in plenty along the eastern bank of 
the river, between Girgeh and Farshoot. The trees bore plenty of 
fruit, but still unripe.” “ Nearly coequal with the limits of the Doum 
Palm js the line that bounds the distribution of the crocodile north- . a 
wards, at the present day, for in ancient times it would appear to have — 
abited the _ 
ranged lower down the Nile, and is said to have even inh 
