446 APPENDIX. No. V. 
any degree diminished, nor can this objection be stated to the Sierra Leone 
collection, in which its relative number is still smaller. 
To the Composite in Dr. Roxburgh’s Flora Indica, however, a considerable 
addition ought, no doubt, to be made; partly on the ground of his having 
apparently paid less attention to them himself, and still more because his 
correspondents, whose contributions form a considerable part of the Flora, 
have evidently in a great measure neglected them. This addition bemg made, 
the proportion of Composite: in India would not differ very materially from 
that of the north coast of New Holland, according to my own collection, which 
I consider as having been formed in more favourable circumstances, and as 
probably giving an approximation of the true proportions im the country exa- 
mined. Baron Humboldt’s herbarium, though absolutely greater than any of 
the others referred to on this subject, is yet, with relation to the vast regions 
whose vegetation it represents, less extensive than either that of the north coast 
of New Holland, or even of the line of the Congo. And as it is in fact as 
much the Flora of the Andes as of the coasts of intratropical America, con- 
taining families nearly or wholly unknown on the shores of equinoctial 
countries, it may be supposed to have several of those families which are com- 
mon to all such countries, and among them Compositee, in very different pro- 
portion. At the same time it is not improbable that the relative number of 
this family in equinoctial America, may be greater than in the similar regions of 
other intratropical countries; while there seems some reason to suppose it 
considerably smaller on the west coast of Africa. 'This diminished proportion, 
however, in equinoctial Africa would be the more remarkable, as there is 
probably no part of the world in which Compositz form so great a portion of 
the vegetation as at the Cape of Good Hope. 
RUBIACE. Of this family there are forty three species in the collec- 
tion, or about one fourteenth of its Phaenogamous plants. I have no reason to 
suppose that this proportion is greater than that existing in other parts of 
equinoctial Africa ; on the contrary, it is exactly that of Smeathman’s collection 
from Sierra Leone. . 
Baron Humboldt, however, states the equinoctial proportion of Rubiacez to 
Phzenogamous plants to be one to twenty-nine, and that the order gradually 
diminishes in relative number towards the poles. 
