viii : : PREFACE. 
and in beauty and management yielding to none, 
stand our Royal Gardens of Kew; where my kind 
and much respected friend, W. T. Aiton, Esq., lias 
not only permitted me to describe the new succu- 
lent plants which he cultivates; but on my merely 
asking permission to describe them, has actually 
sent some of them here for that very purpose, and 
even offered to send the remainder. How well I 
have availed myself of this kindness, as an humble 
 Jabourer in the field of science, the following pages 
will abundantly | set forth :—and the old remark re- 
specting Africa, and which is now too trite to be 
repeated here, may nevertheless be well para- 
phrased by likening it to Kew: ** SEP pun 
MN ex "e "— MN 
tionably be men- 
tionbd various new sldiions to the vast Genus. 
Mesembryanthemum, discovered, brought home, . 
aud now cultivated (with a fine collection of Cape 
plants) by that indefatigable traveller and. natura- 
list W. J. Burchell, Esq., from the interior of the 
Cape of Good Hope, whither his unexampled zeal 
in the cause of Natural History had conducted him 
àn theyears 1811—1815; and the result of whose 
labours will soon appear before the public from his 
own pen, to the great extension of our knowledge 
in almost every department of Natural History; but - 
