Fl r/is of KiIiiiia?idjaro 321 



were obtained from the Seychelle Islands, the small island of 

 Nossi-bey, near the west coast of Madagascar, Comoro Island, 

 'anguebar Island, and the neighbourhood of Mombas and Osi, 

 towns on the east coast of Africa, and from Kilimandjaro itself. 



After the claims of that lofty mountain to a crown of eternal 

 snow had been indicated by Krapf, they were impugned by geo- 

 graphers, and so much ridiculed by Mr Cooley and others, that 

 it led to a strong desire for the exploration of the geography and 

 natural history of that region. It was that which led to Baron 

 Van Der Decken's fatal expedition. He solved the problem, and 

 finally established the real existence of perpetual snow on a moun- 

 tain in the heart of Africa, but at the price of his own life — 

 another sacrifice to the bloody Moloch of African discovery. 



Knowing that the country he explored offered an immense field 

 for every kind of natural history exploration, and that he was ac- 

 companied by collectors and all the appareil of science, natura- 

 lists have looked forward with peculiar interest to the publication 

 of the results of the expedition. The present is one of the first 

 publications of its botanical results (so far as we know, actually the 

 first), and we confess that it has not quite come up to our perhaps 

 somewhat unreasonable or exaggerated expectations. 



The total number of ferns recorded by Dr Kuhn, as brought 

 home from the whole voyage, is 44, of which, however, only 1 2 are 

 from Kilimandjaro. 



Now, if there is a spot in all Africa in which a priori ferns might 

 be expected to occur in great quantity, it is the neighbourhood of 

 Kilimandjaro, the conditions of the climate (moisture and heat) 

 being there unusually favourable to the growth of this kind of vege- 

 tation. As every one knows, too, ferns are more easily collected 

 and preserved than any other class of plants, a single day being 

 often sufficient to dry them, where a week or a fortnight would be 

 required for phanerogamous plants. We are therefore somewhat 

 inclined to surmise that less attention had perhaps been directed 

 to this than to the other classes of plants. 



In estimating the actual Flora of the district, however, from the 

 collections received from the expedition, we must ever bear in mind 

 the hurry and distraction with which such expeditions are conducted, 

 where men walk with their lives pinned to their sleeves, and have to 

 keep their eyes more occupied in searching for an ambush of blacks 

 than a cluster of ferns. This is no doubt the chief cause of the appa- 

 rent smallness of the collection, and is probably also the explanation 



