THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 31 



accident, and allows the writer to do the hard work and to 

 incur the nuisances and perils while he, himself, luxuriantly 

 enthroned in his easy chair enjoys the comforts. 



To be a proper cicerone, however, the writer of travel 

 should not only be a natural as well as a skilled observer, but 

 should possess an agreeable and grapic style so that what he 

 seees the reader also observes and what he concludes mav be 

 considered it authoritative. There are waiters of voyages and 

 travels over whom one falls into uneasy sleep. They lack even 

 the power of inducing dreamless slumber. Others there be 

 who delight us from title-page to colophon : we wonder, in- 

 deed, how they can make so much of so little. 



Such a writer is Sir Harry Johnson who. a few years 

 since, gave us those sumptuous volumes "The Uganda Pro- 

 tectorate." It is not our province or intention at this late day 

 to review this grand work, but to merely call attention to 

 some of its botanical features. Lesser libraries cannot possess 

 it, nor can the ordinary reader and student, so some account 

 of its contents may be useful. Let us call attention to some 

 of the more remarkable plants mentioned. 



First among these everywhere in the dense forests about 

 the Nyanza lakes is a perfectly gorgeous species of Erythrinia, 

 a genus of the pea family represented by some handsome 

 plants in our own Southern States. This African kind pro- 

 duces beautiful clusters of orange or flame-colored blossoms 

 on the familiar style of JVistaria and Laburnum. Li the low- 

 lands, also, along the lakes is everywhere seen the graceful pa- 

 pyrus, the plant which should be apotheosized by the press 

 as the origin of paper. IMarion Crawford in his "Rulers of 

 the South" describes it as growing about the river Arethusa 

 in Sicily and as being no longer found in Egypt. However 

 that may be, it is common enough on the Tapper Nile where 

 its umbrella-like tufts are a charm forever. 



Africa is a country of surprises. Only a few years ago 



