[Crown Copyright Reserved. | 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW. 
BULLETIN 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
No. 10] [1921 
XLVI._-A CONTRIBUTION TO THE FLORA OF 
NORTHERN NIGERIA. 
PLANTS COLLECTED ON THE BAucHtI PLATEAU BY Mr. H. V. LEety. 
J. HuTcurnson. 
In the account of the visit of the Assistant Director to the 
Cameroons and Nigeria (Kew. Bull. 1921, 225-243), it was noted. 
that Mr. H. V. Lely, Forestry Officer, Naraguta, Northern Nigeria, 
was investigating the flora of this botanically little known region, 
and had forwarded to Kew a number of herbarium specimens. 
Mr. Lely has fortunately been able to make several further 
contributions, and has already brought together a very good 
representative collection, especially of the herbaceous vegetation. 
His activities have been confined to that part of Northern 
Nigeria described by Falconer* as “‘the mysterious Bauchi 
plateau, the home of innumerable pagan tribes, whose precipitous 
walls on the South and West long marked the limit between the 
known and the unknown 
This interesting plateau, which rises to a height of 4000— 
4500 ft. above the sea, is veritably a terra nova to the botanical 
collector, and, as might be expected, there are amongst Mr. Lely’s 
plants many new species and quite a number of new records of 
considerable phytogeographic interest. For our knowledge of the 
flora of many parts of the interior of Tropical Africa we have. 
hitherto had to depend mainly on explorers and hunters, whose 
visits were necessarily at the most favourable time of the year, 
and to most of whom plant collecting was a haphazard and minor 
consideration, attended by a considerable amount of extra labour 
and baggage. So that an extensive collection of plants from a 
particularly valuable and sure to yield interesting results. 
As Mr. Lely himself writes, the majority of the plants in 
Northern Nigeria, owing to the excessive dryness of the climate, 
* J. D. Falconer, Geology and Geography of Northern Nigeria, p. 3 
(1911). : 
a (78)16514 Wt3i—P20 100) 12/21 B&s A 
