254 Report S.A.A. Advancemeni' of Science. 



contained 3,000 species, besides which he sent home many Hving 

 succulents, bulbs, and seeds, depending tor his maintenance entirely 

 upon the proceeds of the.se collections. 



Drege, on the other hand, undertook the work at once from a 

 higher point of view. On his extensive travels, which took him to 

 Namaqualand, the Orange River, the Karroo, the coast-belt, the 

 Eastern Province, and Natal, he recorded carefully the peculiarities 

 of each locality where he collected. A.s his collections were esti- 

 mated to have comprised 8,000 species, represented by 200,000 

 specimens, it is obvious that, as Thunberg is called the father of 

 Cape Botany, Drege is the founfler of .South African (leographical 

 Botany. 



In 1843 he pul)lished the results of the.se laltours at Regensburg 

 in a work entitled " Zwei Pflanzen-Cleographischei Dokumente,"' 

 giving not only the lists of the plants collected in various parts, but 

 also grouping them into geographical regions, which he showed tm 

 a ma}). Although minor modifications of some of his boundaries 

 were found to be necessary, and although some of his regions had 

 to be combined into larger units, the principal distinctions recog- 

 nised by him were so correct and natural, that subsequent investiga- 

 tors could onlv confirm them. 



Shortly afterwards a descripti(jn of the forest-regions oi the 

 South Coast was given Ijy Bunbur\ in the Journal of Botany 

 (1843-44); while Krauss published an excellent account of the 

 vegetation of the three main regions of South Africa in his 

 '• Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Flora des Kap-und Natal-landes " 

 (Regensburg, 1846). Having explored the Southern Coast districts 

 from Cape Town to Uitenhage, and afterwards the greater part of 

 Natal, he describes in graphic language the contrast between the 

 forest lands of George and the desert-like nature of the Karroo on the 

 one hand, and the tropical character of the Natal flora on the other 

 hand. 



The botanist whose name is prol)al)!v most familiar to every one 

 who takes an interest in the vegetation of this countr)' is Harve)', 

 and although he difl not pay special attention to phyto-geographical 

 questions, he added many notes of this kind to the descriptions in 

 his " Genera of South African Plants,' and in the three volumes of 

 the Flora Capensis edited under his care. 



The first comprehensive description of South African vegeta- 

 tion from a phyto-geographical point of view was given by Gri.sebach 

 in his "Vegetation der Erde," published in 1871. Based upon the 

 foundations laid by Drege. Grisebach divided South Africa into 

 three large regions. One. called the Cape region, comprised the 

 Cape Colony south of the Orange River, the other one, called the 

 Kalihari region, the country north of the Orange River from the 

 West Coast to the Drakensbergen in the East, and the third one 

 was the Southern extension of tropical -Africa called the Soudan. 

 This he brought down as far as the Great l^'ish River. 



.\lthough Griseljach's arrangements and descriptions cannot be 

 admitted as correct in every respect, his work is a masterly account 



