1894. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 13 



general conclusion of Mr. Beddard's investigation is that there is no 

 more reason to consider the Tadpoles of Xenopus fish-like and ancestral 

 than in the case of any other Tadpoles. 



The Botany of Tropical Africa. 

 The recently issued number (ser. 2., vol. iv., part i) of the Lin- 

 nean Society's Transactions (Botany) contains an account of the 

 plants of Mt. Milanji, Nyasaland, collected by Mr. Alexander Whyte. 

 At the instigation of Mr. H. H. Johnston, our Commissioner and 

 Consul-General in British Central Africa, Mr. Whyte, towards the 

 end of the year 1891, explored the Natural History of this mountain 

 and district, and his collection of plants has been worked out by the 

 officers of the botanical department of the British Museum. The 

 region is about twenty miles to the south of Lake Shirwa, and sixty 

 miles W.S.W of Blantyre. It comprises an isolated range of, for the 

 greater part, precipitous mountains, many of the gullies and ravines 

 being well wooded, while favoured nooks of the highlands are bright 

 with gorgeous displays of flowers. Including those now described for 

 the first time, no less than 62 per cent, of the species collected by 

 Mr. Whyte belong to tropical vegetation. Six per cent, of the re- 

 mainder are plants with a wide distribution in the tropical and sub- 

 tropical regions of the world. Thirteen per cent, are North African 

 plants, chiefly Abyssinian, while nineteen per cent, are South African. 

 Milanji is, in fact, in the region where the floras of North and South 

 Africa meet and intermingle with the characteristic tropical vegeta- 

 tion. Several Malagasy plants are also found. Of special interest 

 are two species of Erica, which carry the South African heaths into 

 the tropics, and a new conifer, of which the nearest allies are also 

 found at the Cape. The plant in question, Widdringtonia WJiytei, 

 is described as a magnificent tree, reaching a height of 140 feet, 

 sometimes with a clear straight stem for 90 feet, and a diameter of 

 5^ feet at six feet from the base, sometimes giving off" long, straggling 

 branches nearer the base. The timber is of a pale reddish colour, of 

 excellent quality, and easily worked. Unfortunately, these fine trees 

 are rapidly disappearing before the forest fires, the few left being 

 confined to the upper ravines and valleys, a large forest finding a 

 comparatively secure habitat in the damp gorges of the Lutshenya 

 valley. It is pointed out that its nearest ally, W.juniperoides, of the 

 Cederberg Mts., Cape Colony, seems also to be dying out, as it is 

 now rare, though it once formed great forests. We are glad to learn 

 that steps have been taken for the preservation of the Milanji forests, 

 and that seedling plants are being raised with the prospect of affording 

 increased supplies of this useful timber in the future. 



Apropos of trees, the great hall at the Natural History Museum 

 now boasts the largest section this side the Atlantic. In one of the 

 bays on the right-hand side will be found a horizontal slice from one 

 of the Californian mammoth trees [Sequoia gigantea). It measures 



