446 APPENDIX. No. V. 



any degree diminished, nor can this objection be stated to the SieiTa Leone 

 collection, in which its relative number is still smaller. 



To the Compositae 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 being made, 

 the proportion of Compositai in India woidd 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 in the country exa- 

 mined. Baron Humboldt's herbarium, though absolutely greater tlian 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 Composite, 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 gi-eater 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 thei-e is 

 probably no part of the world in which Compositae 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 Rubiacete to' 

 Phaenogamous plants to be one to twenty-nine, and that the order gradually 

 diminishes in relative number towards tiie poles. 



