89 



or six feet in height, and a foot and a half in circumference." — 

 ]). 103. 



Beautiful Forests. — "The woods in this part of the country are 

 extensive, and interspersed among the grassy hills. Many of these 

 forests are very beautiful : the trees are large, and much over-run with 

 climbers. The stinkwood {Laurus bullata), and the yellow-wood {Po- 

 docarpus elongata), are the kinds chiefly cut : the former is allied to 

 the bay, and the latter to the yew. Yellow-wood is the prevailing- 

 tree in the forests, and by the sides of rivers, on the eastern side of 

 South Africa ; it is often rendered conspicuous by a long, shaggy, 

 green lichen, with which it is generally clothed. Parasitical plants 

 of the Orchis tribe are common on the trunks and branches of trees 

 in the forests ; one we saw to-day had pretty, white flowers. Baboons, 

 monkeys, bush-bucks, spottedhyaenas, leopards, buffaloes and elephants 

 are inhabitants of these woods : the two latter animals are, however, 

 scarce, and when a leopard is discovered it is hunted unremittingly, 

 till destroyed."— p. 131. 



Species of Euphorbia. — "The intervening country was poor and 

 bushy, interspersed with little salt-flays, or dried-up pools, bordered 

 with maritime plants. In one place I noticed the Euphorbia melo- 

 formis, a plant in form resembling the fruit of a melon, half buried in 

 the earth. There are also some other remarkable species of Euphor- 

 bia in this part of the country ; one of them has scorpion-like, pros- 

 trate stems ; another has thick, angular, spinous, upright stems, about 

 three feet high. The last is called morse doom, vasty thorn. The 

 Zwartkops Rivier is a clear stream with deep pools on a gravelly bed ; 

 its banks are margined with willow and Acacia caffra." — p. 161. 



Remarkable Plants. — " We also observed several remarkable 

 plants, such as a large Lyperia, a bulb, bearing a blossom like the 

 white variety of Scilla peruviana, a Sparaxis with large, pendulous, 

 cylindric, crimson flowers, and another with small, irregular flowers, 

 also a scarlet Satyrium and a Lobelia, blue on the under lip, blue and 

 purple on the upper lip, and yellow on the palate. The two last were 

 on the margin of a little stream, by the side of which we took off our 

 saddles and dined. Further from Philipton the mountains became 

 stony and dry. On their ridges there was a remarkable Zamia, with a 

 root-stock about three feet high, and rigid, palm-like leaves of yellow- 

 ish hue. Nearer Shiloh the country became drier, the grass was 

 short and brown, and many of the hills were besprinkled with doom? 

 boom. Another species of Acacia {Acacia elephantorhiza), also 

 abounded here on dry, light soil ; it had large, compoundly-pinnate 

 Vol. hi. o 



