BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 77 



tliat countr}', as well as in the neighbourhood of Constantine. 

 My desire is to take advantage of that time in order to pene- 

 trate into the interior, where the hot season commences early. 

 With the exception of some days of rain, and of a severe 

 tempest which we encountered at sea, on our return from 

 Bougie, October, November, and the past month, have been 

 extremely fine. Assuredly the proper time for a lover of 

 Natural History in Africa, is from October to mid-June; as 

 the four intervening months are, with few exceptions, times 

 of deplorable drought and desolation. The heavy rains, of 

 which we hear so much, certainly sometimes come down with 

 great fury, but they seldom last long, hardly ever for eight 

 days together; and, since I have been here, there has not 

 been one week in which we have not had at least some half- 

 days of fine weather. As soon as the summer closes, and 

 rain begins to fall, the country is clothed with fresh verdure, 

 and autumn produces not only its own stock of plants and 

 animals, but an entirely fresh animation and vegetation. The 

 only difference between this second crop and the first, is, 

 that the specimens are not quite so fine. There are more 

 than a hundred species that may be regarded as purely be- 

 longing to winter, which begin to expand in their greatest 

 beauty in the middle of November, and go off by the end of 

 February, or earlier. In the province of La Calle, where we 

 resided from November to December, the whole face of the 

 country was glittering with most brilliant varieties; and 

 Durieu, whom I left there to botanize, finds his time more 

 than employed in examining the different species of Fungi, 

 as abundant thei*e as in the forest of St Germain. Hitherto 

 I believe that it has hardly been suspected that Africa was 

 so rich in this description of plants. How cursorily the 

 country has been investigated, and how carelessly and absurd- 

 ly our good predecessors have botanized, it would be difficult 

 to describe. Would you have believed that the yellow and 

 white NymphcBaSy in spite of their great size of flowers 

 and foliage, have entirely escaped their notice, together with 

 seven species of rohjgonumi and more than a hundred and 



