98 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



places of nature where the remnants of a mighty 

 fauna may yet be seen. 



For the ornithologist, the quiet gunner in search 

 of game birds, or wildfowl, or small buck, the lover 

 of flowers and scenery, or the man seeking the purest 

 air and the healthiest climate in the world, there is 

 no better country than the Cape Colony. When 

 the rains fall, the open valleys and the deeper kloofs 

 become, as by magic, carpeted with wild-flowers. 

 Pelargoniums grow in thick masses middle-high 

 beneath the rock walls. Irises, gladioli, ixias, ama- 

 ryllids, and other bulbous flowers star the earth ; 

 heaths, orchids, strelitzias, cotyledons, heliophilas, 

 hibiscus, plumbago; all these and ahundred others lend 

 beauty to the valleys or the hill-slopes. Flowering 

 shrubs abound. The wealth of flower life at the Cape 

 is, indeed, indescribable, except in the ample catalogue 

 of the professed botanist. The late Miss Marianne 

 North has painted many noble specimens of Cape 

 flowers, yet she has left, perforce, a hundred equally 

 as beautiful undepicted. The Cape as a place of 

 resort for those seeking to escape the rigours of 

 English winter has only lately been discovered. It 

 deserves to be far more widely known than it is at 

 present. Here, indeed, in a thousand lovely yet 

 neglected spots, lie the playgrounds and pleasaunces 

 of future generations. 



