IN SOUTH AFRICA. 559 
and occupying considerable spaces of ground without much 
mixture. This is the case, in particular, with the Sugar- 
bush, the Kreupelboom,* and the Silver-tree. The first 
forms a thick belt of shrubbery, of great extent, along the 
eastern flanks of the Devil's and Table Mountains, and 
clothes their underfalls where they join the Flats, as well as 
the Wynberg Hill, &c.; the second predominates in like 
manner along the northern bases of the same mountains, 
and the third, at a somewhat greater elevation. 
It is curious that scarcely any of the Cape plants of this 
tribe, numerous and beautiful as they are, are known to be 
in any way useful except as fuel. The honey of Protea mel- 
lifera is said, by Thunberg, to be a good pectoral medicine; 
the bark of some speciest contains a great deal of tanning 
matter, which might probably be turned to account; and 
the nuts of Brabeium are said to be eatable if prepared by 
soaking for some hours in fresh water ; but by far the greater 
quantity appear to possess no qualities that can render them 
either useful or noxious to man. The same, indeed, may be 
said of many other tribes of Cape plants, and those some of 
the most interesting to the botanist and the gardener. Un- 
doubtedly they are alt important in the economy of nature, 
and it is impossible to believe that so much beauty had been 
bestowed on them in vain. I have long been convinced that 
plants were not created merely to supply the physical wants 
of man, and that those which are not directly useful to us, 
in the ordinary sense of the word, are not on that account, 
the less admirable, or the less worthy of our attention. 
But the Cape plants are not all destitute of active proper- 
ties. The Diosmas, which are very numerous throughout the 
southern parts of the colony, all possess a very strong, p. 
Bent, and generally disagreeable smell, and are of consi- 
derable importance in medicine; in the colony, indeed, the 
leaves, steeped in vinegar or brandy, are universally employed 
* Leucospermum conocarpum. 
T Meme tm argenteum, Leucosperinum conocarpum, and Protea grandi- 
flora 
VOL. I. 2T 
