May, 1893. FPLORAL REGIONS IN AFRICA. 371 
and there are no plants whatever over wide areas. In spring, a con- 
siderable number of small annuals start up after the rains, flower and 
fruit in an incredibly short time, and die down immediately the 
country dries again; the residents are stunted, very often thorny 
bushes, extremely small and only able to resist drought either by 
covering themselves with a woolly coat, or by hiding their transpira- 
tion pores in cunningly-concealed pits or grooves which are so many 
traps to prevent the egress of the precious water. Some are said to 
surround themselves with an atmosphere of their own by exudation 
of essential .oil, &c., but this is theoretical. Many have no leaves, 
others only have leaves in the wet season, and the few that keep their 
leaves are succulents or have them most beautifully adapted to their 
requirements. 
When we proceed further along the coast and reach the little 
limestone hillocks by the sea at Alexandria, we are again among a 
different set of plants. They are very near the Algerian forms, 
but not exactly the same; probably they came from Palestine and are 
part of the Syrian flora as distinguished from that of the desert. 
Nothing is more exquisite than the flora of these nummulitic lime- 
stone hills. There are masses of the crimson Ranunculus asiaticus, the 
delicate little white star-of-Bethlehem, many species of Astragalus, and 
generally a wealth of colour and a beauty of form which I have never 
seen elsewhere. 
On entering the Nile delta there is again a sudden and distinct 
change. The deep, carefully-irrigated alluvium is covered with a 
dense mass of plants, that is, if they are allowed to grow, for the soil 
is very valuable, and these very special characteristics of soil and 
water have produced the endemic Egyptian plants, such as the 
Trifolium alexandrinum, or “ berseem” clover, of which some seven 
crops can be raised in one year on the same ground. Travelling up 
the Nile, we find ourselves before Assouan out of the delta flora, and 
again, as at Tripoli, in the great desert whose plants in many cases 
extend from Beluchistan tothe shore of the Atlantic between Morocco 
and Senegambia. 
Thus, in North Africa there are four marked floras more dif- 
ferent from one another than are the floras of England, and one 
might almost say, Tibet, and to these must be added that of the 
higher peaks of the Atlas Mountains, which is of an alpine character, 
that is to say, five different sets of plants in Extratropical North Africa. 
In Extratropical South Africa, beginning at the North, we find 
along the coast an offshoot of the evergreen humid tropical forest 
which has crept down from the Zambesi, and has occupied Pondo- 
land, the lower parts of Natal, and, in an extremely modified con- 
dition so far as species go, formed the Perie Forest of King William’s 
Town, and the Knysna Forest of Cape Colony. All these species of 
the eastern littoral, finding themselves in temperate and not tropical 
conditions, have varied greatly, and being separated from each other, 
2B 2 
