LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. xli 



time passed at Benguela, in lat. 12° .30' S., he proceeded by sea to 

 Mossamedes (Little Fish Bay, lat. 15° S.), where the magnificent 

 climate speedily recovered him, and he gradually extended his 

 journeys, first along the coast as far south as Cape Negro, the port of 

 Pinda, and the Bay of Tigers (lat. 17° S.), and afterwards, as the spring 

 (October) approached, inland to the elevated plateau called Huilla, 

 about 80 miles from the coast, which rises to the height of from about 

 5800 to 6000 feet above the sea-level. A short sketch of the vege- 

 tation of the coast-region is given in a published letter to Dr. Hooker 

 (Journ. Linn. Soc, Bot. vol. v. p. 182), written after Dr.Welwitsch's 

 return to Loanda. The remarkable differences between its flora and 

 that of the coast of Angola proper are very striking even at Benguela, 

 and at Mossamedes an entirely new littoral vegetation appeared; 

 here he found " a motley mixture of various floras, with a prevailing 

 correspondence to those of Senegambia and the Cape of Good Hope. 

 .... At a distance of a mile from the coast, however, the forms cha- 

 racteristic of the Cape flora are lost ; the vegetation becomes with 

 every step richer in purely tropical forms, which are especially deve- 

 loped on the banks of the Bero, in a variety one would never have 

 imagined in so apparently dry a coast-region." Further south this 

 dryness becomes more and more excessive, and the flora poorer and 

 poorer, chiefly consisting of Eupliorbice. As Cape Negro (lat. 

 15° 40' S.) is approached, the coast rises to form a perfectly level 

 plateau of about 3000 or 4000 feet in height, and extending over 

 six mUes into the country, composed of a calcareous tufa scattered 

 over with loose sandstone shingle. The vegetation on this arid 

 waste is scanty enough ; but it was here that Dr. Welwitsch disco- 

 vered that remarkable plant which has rendered his name familiar 

 to every botanist, and has formed the subject of Dr. Hooker's well- 

 known memoir (Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. xxiv. 1863) — \h.QWelivitscMa 

 mirabilis, since found in very similar country by Baines andAndersson 

 in Damara Land, near Walvisch Bay, some 500 miles south of Cape 

 Negro. 



Thg vegetation of the highlands of HuiUa, though bringing to 

 light no such wonder as the WelwitscMa, produced quite as strong an 

 impression on the mind of the traveller. He started from Mossamedes 

 at the beginning of October, and following the banks of the llio 

 Mayombo, reached Bumbo, on the slopes of the Serra de Chella, and 

 crossing that chain at a height of about 4200 feet, found himself on 

 the tableland at the end of the month. In a letter to Dr. Hooker 

 he says : — " The entire appearance of the landscape, the aspect of 



