REPORT ON THE BOTANY OF THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS. 51 



Helena, namely : Anthoxanthum odoratum, Panicum crus-corvi, Alopecurus paniceux, 

 Pentapetes erythroxylon, Psoralea apliylla, and Spilanthus arboreus ; and of these only 

 two are indigenous. Melhania melanoxylon. and perhaps one or two more of the endemic 

 plants, were imported and cultivated in this country towards the end of the last century, 

 otherwise nothing further was known of the hotany until the beginning of the present 

 century. In 1805, Dr W. J. Burchell, who afterwards distinguished himself as a traveller in 

 South Africa and Brazil, arrived at St Helena, where he remained until 1810; and during 

 these five years he thoroughly botanised the island. Unfortunately for science, he never 

 published anything, and scarcely allowed any naturalist access to any part of his her- 

 barium. On his death, in 1865, his magnificent botanical collections, including the St 

 Helena Herbarium, were presented by his sister to the Kew Herbarium ; and Sir Joseph 

 Hooker made use of it for the Lecture on Insular Floras referred to at the be°dnnin<r of 

 this sketch. The whole of Burchell's vast herbarium was in an excellent state of preserva- 

 tion, and it was supplemented by copious manuscript notes and descriptions of plants, 

 especially of the St Helena plants. Indeed, there is a manuscript Flora Heleniana, written 

 during his sojourn in the island, from which we have drawn much valuable information. 

 This is only a fragment, yet it contains full and accurate descriptions of a considerable 

 number of the endemic plants, with the names he proposed for them : aud the bulk of 

 them had at the date of his writing not been published. There is also a fine collection of 

 sketches of the scenery of St Helena, and drawings of the plants, executed by Dr Burchell. 

 This was presented to the Kew Library by Sir Joseph Hooker, to whom it was given by Miss 

 Burchell when she became aware of the great interest he took in the flora of the island. 

 The St Helena collection of dried plants consisted of 198 species of phsenogams and ferns, 

 and included all the indigenous plants known to exist, or to have existed, and several that 

 are not represented, so far as we are aware, in any other collection. Dr Burchell, there- 

 fore, had collected full materials for a flora in the first decade of the century ; yet hitherto 

 no complete enumeration of the plants has been published, about half-a-dozen of them being 

 described for the first time in this work. Nevertheless, nearly the whole of Burchell's 

 descriptive work has been forestalled and his proposed names superseded. From St Helena, 

 Burchell went to South Africa, where he travelled and collected for a period of five years ; 

 and the enormous collections he made there, and afterwards in Brazil, were perhaps the 

 primary cause that prevented him from publishing a flora of St Helena. 



Soon after Burchell left St Helena, another botanist appeared on the scene. This was 

 Dr Roxburgh, the noted Indian botanist, who on his way home to England in enfeebled 

 health, stayed in the island from the 7th of June 1813, to the 1st of March 1814. In spite 

 of bad health, Roxburgh nearly exhausted the botany, and compiled a catalogue of the 

 plants collected or seen, and described a large number of the indigenous plants for the first 

 time. This catalogue was published as an appendix to Beatson's Tracts relative to the 

 Island of St Helena, in 1816, after the author's death, or it would doubtless not have 



