84 Capt. Francis M. Norman on the [sess. li. 



and being sensible of a taste for natural history, I began to 

 teach myself botany, and with such success that, in a year 

 afterwards, when I met JMr Lowe for the first time, on the 

 occasion of one of his annual visits, I was able to show him, 

 dried and named by myself by aid of " Hooker and Arnott," 

 a large proportion out of the 260 British species which, 

 approximately speaking, are found in jMadeira, as well as 

 most of those which were described in his Flora as far as it 

 had gone. 



Thenceforward, until I left, we were in constant com- 

 munication. I must also express my grateful thanks to 

 Senhor J. M. Moniz, the one Portuguese resident who was a 

 botanist, for all the great assistance which he subsequently 

 gave me. Mr Moniz's name is constantly met with in Mr 

 Lowe's book, and many interesting plants are named after 

 him, such as Monizia edulis, Lowe, a splendid Umbellifer to 

 be seen at Kew ; Helichrysum Monizii, Lowe, &c. 



I remained in Madeira for three years after I began to 

 study ])lants, during which period I carefully botanised the 

 whole island. It is greatly to be regretted that Mr Lowe's 

 Flora was never finished. It appeared only up to the end 

 of Solanacece. 



It is now nearly tliiity years since the issue of Mr Lowe's 

 first number, and there is still no complete Flora of 

 Madeira to be had. But I am very glad to know that at 

 la.st ]\Ir James Yates J(jhnson, a naturalist who has long 

 resided in the island, Init whose health has interfered very 

 much with his lesearclies, has finished one which is ex- 

 pected shortly to Ije published l)y Dulau, of Soho Square, 

 London. 



Tlie basaltic island of Madei7\a,30miles long, with an average 

 breadth of 10 miles, presenting a central mountain ridge of 

 great elevation (upwards of 6000 feet on the sunnnit of Pico 

 linivo, the highest point), is in lat. 32° 43" N. and long. 17° W., 

 1300 miles from Southampton, the nearest land being a point 

 on the African coast, 320 miles distant. The chief features in 

 its climate are great general steadiness of weather and marked 

 equability of temperature, with a definite and considerable 

 atmospherifi liumidity, which is occasionally, for three or four 

 days at a time, violently interrupted by a hot extremely dry 

 cast wind, called " Leste," from the African continent, and this 



