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orders Mr. Baker’s advanced years made it necessary to entrust the 
necessary additions to other hands. The Euphorbaceae were not so 
easily disposed of. This vast family will probably prove to supply 
the dominant constituent of tropical forests. In view of the large 
access of fresh material and of what had been worked out by Conti- 
nental botanists it was necessary to recast entirely what had been 
prepared, This task was generously undertaken by my successor, 
Lt.-Col. Sir David Prain, F.R.S., and though my name stands on 
the title-page of the volume, its accomplishment and the merit 
which attaches to it must for the most part be attributed to his 
indefatigable energy and critical insight. Mr. J. Hutchinson 
collaborated with him, and Mr, N. E. Brown, A.L.S., who finds a 
peculiar fascination in the study of succulent plants, the difficulties 
of which most botanists find deterrent, undertook the genus 
Euphorbia, 
“The present section thus disposes of all that was in view when I 
retired from Kew, The ‘Flora of Tropical Africa’ differs from 
other works in the series of which it is a part in having an official 
and not a personal character. In the preface in the seventh volume 
I have given an account of the circumstances of its initation and of 
those under which, at the instance of the Government, its prepara- 
tion was resumed. 
“In view of what I have said, I can have no doubt that I am 
adopting the course which is most expedient in the interest of the 
roe in resigning the task of its completion to the present Director 
of Kew. 
sequence does not therefore follow on from that of Professor Oliver, 
but as the actual sequence adopted by him is that of the ‘Genera 
Plantarum’ anyone who cares to do so can readily correct Professor 
Oliver’s numbers. Unfortunately, in Vol. V.,a further correction 
is necessary. By one of those clerical oversights which can only be 
accounted for by the frailty of human nature, the numbering of the 
cohorts does not conform to either work. PrRsona.zs should be 
ix, instead of xxiv. and LAMIALEsS x. instead of xxv. 
“ Although the Old World has always had before it the problem 
of unknown Africa, it is singular how tardy has been its exploration 
compared with that of the New. Yet it has been through no lack 
of curiosity. In the fourth century B.c., and possibly earlier, the 
Greeks had a proverb preserved by Aristotle, det gépe te Ay3in 
kavov. At the commencement of our era Pliny, if with a whimsical 
explanation, recalls the ‘vulgare Grecie dictum semper aliqui 
novi Africam adferre. In our twentieth century the novelty 
descends on the bewildered botanist in a continuous flood, and more 
than one generation will come and go without seeing it exhausted. 
