IN SOUTH AFRICA. 565 
and there are some, particularly in the Karroos of the in- 
terior, which require, for their full development, circum- 
stances that recur only after intervals of several years. 
Australia appears, by the accounts we have received, to be 
the country which, on the whole, resembles Southern Africa in 
its botanical peculiarities. Tropical America, with its grand and 
gorgeous masses of vegetation, produces a much stronger im- 
pression on the spectator than the Cape, even in the height of 
its flowery beauty ; but it does not probably yield a greater 
variety of plants, space for space, and its productions are 
far more difficult to collect. You are not tantalized at the 
Cape, as you so often are in Brazil, by clusters of splendid 
blossoms and strange fruits hanging high above you, and 
baffling all attempts to reach them. But I do not know that 
in any part of the world I have seen a more beautiful display 
of wild flowers than on the higher Alps of Switzerland and 
Savoy. The rich emerald-green turf of those elevated re- 
gions, glowing with the crimson Rhododendron and ena- 
melled with the bright blossoms of the Gentians, Saxifrages, 
Crocuses, and hundreds of other gay and delicate flowers, 
present a still. more delightful spectacle than the hills and 
sands of the Cape in the heights of the bulb-season. All the 
beauties of the vegetable kingdom seem on the Alps to be, 
as it were, in miniature. 
If, with reference to the geographical distribution of plants, 
the globe be divided into botanical provinces, Southern 
Africa will be one of the most distinct and strongly marked 
of these, although (as I shall afterwards shew), its peculiari- 
ties seem gradually to shade off, as you proceed north- 
eastward, into those of the tropical regions. It would seem 
that the distribution of plants, and that of animals are not 
governed by precisely the same laws: Le Vaillant, Dr. 
Smith, and Mr. Swainson, have shown that very many birds 
are common to Senegal and the Cape colony; whereas I 
believe that these two countries possess not a single flower- 
ing plant in common, and scarcely even a genus of eg 
with the exception of such as are universally d 
