262 MR. PLANT'S EXCURSION 
wherever there are swamps, Gladiolus occasionally, CMronia, Campa- 
nula, Lobelia, Rhus, Veltheima, Ornithogalum, Asparagus (two beautiful 
kinds), Aponogeton in all the small streams, Gnidia (rarely), Schottia, 
Oxalis (frequent), Hibiscus, Indigofera, Senecio and Cineraria. The ter- 
restrial Orchids deserve more than a passing remark: they are numerous 
and very beautiful; in my opinion there are many here but little in- 
ferior to the most showy of the epiphytous kinds. I shall take care 
to forward a good parcel of roots, and then perhaps cultivators may 
have an opportunity of judging for themselves. In the meantime a 
description, however faint, may induce some to give them the attention 
they so well merit. Fancy then a plant with the general characteris- 
ties of an Ophrys, producing a spike of flowers as large and as thickly- 
set as those of Saccolabium guttatum; often indeed measuring two feet 
in length, of a bright salmon-colour intermixed with as bright a yellow. 
Another with plaited foliage and a nodding head of some twenty bright 
yellow blossoms, having a deep stain of crimson on the cucullate lip, in 
the manner and of the size of a Dendrobium. Again, a species with 
fleshy persistent leaves and an eréct stem of about two feet, supporting 
from fifteen to thirty large yellow flowers, the lip blotched and lined 
with pale purple, bearing the aspect of some robust Zpidendrum ; and 
others whose white and pink blossoms at a little distance are easily 
mistaken for Hyacinths. Mingled with these is often found a plant 
not less curious or beautiful, which I imagine to be an Orobanche 
(Harveya Capensis, Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 118): its habits agree exactly 
with that parasite ; it produces a flower-stem of about a foot in length, 
bearing five or six very large pure white flowers, averaging about three 
inches in diameter; it is usually found adhering to a thistle. 
With regard to the culture of African terrestrial Orchids I would 
observe that the soil I fancy the nighest approach to their native me- 
dium will be found in the black alluvial mould of marshes or water- 
meadows, tempered with pure sand, which enters largely into the com- 
position of all the soils here, where we have nothing like the peat-soil 
of England, nor is there much decaying vegetable matter present where 
these Orchids are usually found. All those from the coast are subject 
to a long period of drought; and unless specially marked as the inha- 
bitants of swamps, this fact will have to be borne in mind. The dry 
. season commonly extends from April to October, and for two months 
towards the end of this period they may be said to be perfectly dry, 
